In 1979, John was one of the founders of Crescent Arts, the gallery and artists’ studios complex in Scarborough. Situated in the spacious garden-basement areas of Scarborough’s main Art Gallery, Crescent Arts has, over the years, proved to be a vital and influential ‘living arts’ institution in North Yorkshire, with a remarkable exhibitions record of contemporary visual arts. Its current resident artists continue to provide workshops and activities for the wider community.
As the first event of the commemorative year, John has been asked to mount a solo retrospective exhibition of his prints in the gallery of Crescent Arts, from March 1st to 31st. In total, he will show approximately 40 prints representing 25 years of printmaking. This exhibition is now in the planning stage. A current possibility is to present some of the prints as related pairs, either with deliberate or incidental compositional relationships. See print 1 with print 2 below and print 3 with print 4 below. Some other prints will be shown as existing self-contained suites, as exemplified by the ‘Zodiac’ set. Currently John is working a pair of related prints, both being based on 19th century prints of flowering plants – a honeysuckle and a convolvulus; see initial images 5 and 6 below. Each print will also incorporate embossed lettered titles and alternative names of the plants.
