John W Hodkinson

After Leeds college of Art in 1964 followed by the RCA, John moved up into the hills of Cumbria in 1971. Life has been a mixture of exhibiting, teaching in art schools, and freelance work. His work has mostly involved drawing, watercolour painting, mixed media collage and construction. John has increasingly been using an iPad because it provides an ideal way of combining the various strands in which he has always worked. Whilst it provides a good way of drawing in traditional ways, it also presents opportunities for pushing the boundaries of drawing into unexplored territory, drawing with light as pigment. John avoids making things which are reliant upon ‘special effects and technological gimmickry’, and prefers his results to remain close to the long tradition of painting, drawing and making, whether representational or abstract in intention.

Lately he has been experimenting with working into sampled and simulated grounds or ‘papers’ in the iPad, a direct extension of much earlier collage and construction work. Problems with a severe carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands affected his finger sensitivity and the iPad has been both a great challenge and opportunity in dealing with this.