Justin Knowles; artist (very good obit)
Hyfler/Rosner
http://www.austindesmond.com/Frameset.htm?HTM/paintings/justinknowles/index.html~mainFrame
Justin Knowles
Boldly inventive painter interrupted in his work for 24
years
03 April 2004
Justin Denys Ingram Knowles, artist and teacher: born
Exeter, Devon 19 November 1935; married 1961 Anthea Fear
(one daughter, and one son deceased; marriage dissolved
1983), 1991 Sarah Stott (marriage dissolved 1994); died
Bovey Tracey, Devon 24 February 2004.
Justin Knowles was one of the most innovative artists of his
generation. Writing in Studio International in 1972 Patrick
Heron contended that Knowles's work was "eloquent, fertile,
and commands a sheerness of image that is abolutely
masterly". This was praise indeed from a leading
practitioner and critic, especially as Knowles was
essentially self-taught and always self-directed.
But within a year or so of Heron writing, a studio fire
would stop Knowles exhibiting for many years. The
intervening period showed him at his most resourceful, able
to surmount huge emotional and economic setbacks. His
re-emergence as a public artist in the early 1990s showed
that he had lost none of his power and inventiveness.
Knowles was born in Exeter in 1935. His early life was
largely unhappy and unsettled. While his father, Peter, was
absent during the Second World War, his mother, Iris, began
an affair and his parents divorced when Justin was four.
Aged five, he was at the subject of a custody battle, and in
the ensuing years he was shuttled between the two.
Some of Justin's happiest days were spent with his paternal
grandparents and aunt at Trebartha, a lush Cornish paradise
on the edge of Bodmin Moor. It was a welcome escape from
Belmont, a Sussex preparatory school which he entered aged
six. The headmaster gave him a lifelong hatred of authority
figures.
Kelly College, near Tavistock, which his father had
attended, was a contrast. The headmaster, R.V. Westall, ran
a liberal regime, allowing Justin to concentrate on favoured
subjects. Westall encouraged walks on Dartmoor, and the art
master, Michael Green, fostered Justin's talent and
introduced him to the work of several artists who would
remain lifelong favourites - Cézanne, Braque and Matisse.
Self-taught as a trombonist, he played in a local jazz
group, also taking singing lessons. Justin developed a
catholic love of music, which ranged over folk and reggae,
his classical tastes ranging from Mozart to Webern.
Although Westall wanted Justin to go to university and Green
already saw him as "developing into an interesting and
promising artist", his father and stepmother disagreed. His
father's attempt to turn Justin Knowles into a chartered
surveyor proved a disaster, however. Peter Knowles was an
agricultural estate agent based in Farnham, Surrey, where
Justin attended evening life drawing classes at the School
of Art. On the principle that "I refuse to do things when
I'm burned into them," as he later put it to the writer Mary
Flanagan, Justin disrupted his father's office and
deliberately failed his professional examinations.
From 1955-57, he carried a similarly Bolshy attitude with
him as a National Serviceman. "The most indolent officer
we've ever had in the regiment," was his colonel's summing
up. After National Service, Justin Knowles tried
advertising, was seconded to a soap company, and was a
sufficiently successful salesman to be sent to Africa to set
up subsidiaries. An incidental benefit was his discovery of
tribal art, which would influence his own work. He loved
what he called its "formal expressionism".
Back in London, Knowles joined the Royal Anthropological
Society and began seriously collecting African art, guided
by the dealer Herbert Reiser. It was just one of many
collections he assembled, others being the pictures of the
Cornish primitive painter Alfred Wallis, penny toys and,
when he was hard up, 1950s glass.
In 1965, Knowles visited New York. This was the year that he
decided to paint full-time, even though he was aged 30 and
lacked formal training. His was no tentative beginning. From
the outset, he seemed well aware of trends in abstract
painting on both sides of the Atlantic. He began teaching at
one of the most exciting art schools in the country, Bath
Academy of Art, at Corsham. In Devon, he and his wife
Anthea, whom he had married in 1961, settled in an old dame
school at Chudleigh and he set up a studio.
From the outset of his artistic career, Knowles established
an impressive reputation as a boldly inventive painter. In
1965, he was included in the English Eye exhibition at
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York. In 1966, he won a
Major Prize in the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Open
Painting Competition, was included in the key New Generation
exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery and had solo shows at
Camden Arts Centre and at the Galleria Cadario, Milan.
In 1967, he was again at Camden Arts Centre in its Survey
'67 Abstract Painters, was included in the Bath Academy of
Art team Travel d'Equipe International Section First Prize
at the Paris Biennale, had four solo shows in Britain and
abroad and was even then in a string of important
collections.
Using a limited range of acrylic colours straight from the
pot, he was producing lyrical works employing shaped
canvases and free-standing shapes. These were not painted
sculptures; they remained paintings, the paint working
across the physical form rather than following it.
Knowles' future as a major modern British abstract artist
seemed assured. Then, in 1973, his uninsured studio caught
fire in mysterious circumstances. It cost him most of his
finished work, his work in progress and all his materials.
What Knowles called "the silent time" began. After his 1973
show at Waddington Galleries, it would be 24 years before he
exhibited again.
The Devon home had eventually to be sold and Knowles
returned to Islington. He began teaching in Exeter,
commuting twice a week, and turned his attention to
publishing and other businesses, such as property. He
launched the publishing house Denys Ingram, which focused on
collectible antique toys; became a book packager, including
working with the Walt Disney Company, which eventually
bought his business; and eventually, returned to Devon,
launching the Flyfishers' Classic Library. Knowles had begun
flyfishing at Trebartha as a boy. Settled in Devon he began
again and eventually pursued big game-fishing abroad and
fished for the English team in the 1994 Marlin World Cup in
Mauritius.
A chance visit in 1991 by Patrick Heron, accompanied by the
Canadian businessman and art collector David Thomson, helped
spark Knowles' return to art production. Thomson bought some
of Knowles' works and offered to pay for new materials and
studio rent in exchange for more. Almost simultaneously,
John Butler of the fine art department at Plymouth
University showed interest in compiling an archive of his
work.
The university's researches uncovered almost 4,000 drawings
that Knowles had secretly made during the "silent period".
From the late 1980s, Knowles had found visits to Thailand
and Cambodia inspirational, and in 1996 the first show of
his drawings was staged in Bangkok under the auspices of the
British Council.
Knowles began producing sculpture again, spare and beautiful
works superbly finished in a range of materials. He gained a
series of awards and there was a string of high-profile
shows, including ones at the National Technical Museum in
Prague, at Austin / Desmond Fine Art in London and at Lemon
Street Gallery in Truro, all in 2002; and at the Museum and
Art Gallery, Plymouth, and Michael Wood Fine Art there, both
in 2003.
There were major commissions, including work for Winchester
Cathedral (2001), and Exeter Cathedral (2002). Knowles' work
is held by the Tate Gallery, the Arts Council, and other
public collections in the provinces and abroad.
David Buckman