John lawson
PhOTO: JANe feldMAN
Interview with Stephen Gerard Dietemann Photos by Jane Feldman and Jonathan Hankin Stephen Gerard Dietemann:John, it is a pleasure to meet with you at your new studio space in downtown Great Barrington. I’ve long admired your work and am excited about being able to talk about it with you and share that conversation with the readers of The Artful Mind. So let’s get started: Tell us a bit about you, you know, some basics, where you were born, family, etc. Especially events or people who influenced your artist bent… John Lawson: Growing up in a rural environment in england without a TV was well suited for a wandering poet’s soul. for many years our only form of transportation was a clunking italian Motor Guzzi with sidecar. i remember dad decked in half inch thick glass goggles and ex surplus WWii military gloves, boots and coat, Mom wrapped in her nurse’s cape clutching her cap with my sister and me bouncing around in the sidecar. My angst for adventure could be described as a loose translation of Albert Camus’, “The rebel” laced with any of the novels by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, or Joseph heller i managed to lay my hands on. We lived in a haunted Vicarage with coal fires and whistling chimneys, creaking apple trees and child eating rose bushes. in the winter months, hobo’s and gypsies would visit looking for odd jobs in return for food. They were always invited in from the harsh cold, no matter what hour, and i was fascinated with their dress and accents. i marveled at how the weather had worn their skin. everything they owned appeared to be tied with string onto the inside of their heavy woolen coats and shawls. Their sense of place in the environment and nomadic contentment for owning very little has had a lasting effect on me. Other early childhood memories conjure up: swaying fields of ripening mustard, owls, the smell of hops on the vine and twice on Sunday listening to my father preach about how he loved his father and all his children while i stared out of the stained glass windows with whatever light could shine through with all those
12 • Novemberrr ...bery bery good! 2013 The ArTful MiNd
saints and angels, lions and lambs and George’s and dragons, dancing within, wondering if i would ever muster the courage to climb a crow’s nest or win the bet and kiss the new girl in the class room.
You have an interesting family, lots of writers in particular. Are you the first visual artist? John: i always cringed when i heard the expression ‘like father like son’ or ‘the fruit never falls far from the tree’. however looking back at it all now, i would say my father was a successful artist and often very visual. Most of his adult working life he wrote two sermons a week, one for 35 minutes the other for 40. That’s a lot of writing by any standard. he had perfected his technique so that he never had to worry about publishing or selling any of it. his secret was that twice a week he got paid to perform to a live audience albeit at times, i felt, a rather limited one, and for the remainder of the week start a new writing project. There’s a joke about three school boys sitting around comparing how much their dad’s brought home from work. The first boy said his dad was a policeman and brought home 50 dollars a week. The second said his dad was a lawyer and could bring home as much as 150 dollars a week. The third boy proudly boasts his dad was a preacher man and so successful it took four adults to carry his entire wages home twice every Sunday. So how did your interest in the visual arts begin? Did anyone in particular nurture that interest? John: i was always drawing and making things and Boy scouts taught me how to use what you have. Playing third trumpet in the high school Swing band gave me the courage to engage in crowds before escaping into beer tents with circus women sporting strange tattoos. And at the top of the list i would say stained glass windows. One of my favorite places to visit is Chagall’s “Blue Window”, located next to the meditation room in the heart of the united Nations Building. i can sit there for hours watching the effects from the light dance within his painted figures.
What artists – or non artists if that is the case – have most affected your work? John: hands down, top of the list is the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. The shear exuberance and playfulness of his vision i find remarkable. Second place would be Monty Python’s flying Circus with the soccer player Georgie Best, with edger Allen Poe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, robert louis Stevenson, and Mary Shelley’s, frankenstein, a close third. i tend to like extremes, and am a lifelong member of the happy/Sad club. i work on trying not to be influenced by other visual artists as the tendency to copy seems to rear its ugly head. On saying that, my collage and bead work has been compared to the very talented dubuffet, elizabeth Murrey and romare Bearden and to quote Bearden now seems appropriate; “Practically all the great artists have accepted the influence of others. But the difference lies in the fact that the artist with vision sees his material, chooses, changes, and by integrating what he has learned with his own experience, finally molds something distinctly personal.”
How did the places you have lived in influence your work? New Orleans in particular has had a big influence, but you have lived in many other places as well. Tell us how New Orleans in particular — but perhaps other places as well – have affected your artistic direction. John: Traveling into uncertainty remains an important part of my artistic journey. every day i try to focus on what’s in front of me now. like most artists, new surroundings are absorbed into my work even though at times we are aware this allows for vulnerability. i have a list of places i have travelled to and would say home is my studio regardless of location. if i can remain open, the places traveled and the stranger’s i encounter becomes absorbed into the fabric of my work. Right…can you talk some more about New Orleans and its unique culture and how you were affected by it? John: New Orleans is its own Kingdom. its uniqueness not only can be found in its architecture, music, food and people but also