Excerpts from the essay Intuition Rules by Olivia Heron, Curator at The Whitworth (University of Manchester), published in the exhibition book ‘John Lyons: Carnivalesque (2024)’:
Lyons was 25 when he arrived in London in 1959 to study art at Goldsmiths College. At the time, many artists and intellectuals from British colonies on the verge of independence were energised by the prospect of a new cosmopolitan dawn emerging through the disintegration of the British Empire and its replacement with the Commonwealth…
Lyons is part of this generation who, as Stuart Hall put it, 'came to London in a spirit not altogether different from that in which Picasso and others went to Paris: to fulfil their artistic ambitions and to participate in the heady atmosphere of artistic innovation in the most advanced centres of art at that time'. As Hall explains, modernist thinking - 'the spirit of restless innovation, the impulse to "make it new” - defined their outlook, and indeed these artists came to Britain feeling that they naturally belonged to the modern movement, and in a way, it belonged to them [..] Their aim was to engage the modern world as equals on its own terrain.’
‘Anatomy of an Egg Box’ and ‘Egg Box Anatomy’ (both 1964) are two sketches in which the contours of a humble egg box are isolated, broken down and reconstructed in formations recalling the human body. They demonstrate the transformational possibilities Lyons began to see in observational study. Elsewhere, created the year after Lyons moved to Manchester, ‘Marie Louise’ (1968), his earliest extant painting, is a nude figure study in which the curves of the model's body shift and change through shadow and light as the perspective rotates about a central point, clearly showing the influence of the early Cubists
From the mid-1970s Lyons expressive style and distinct colour palette begins to flourish in paintings exploring anxiety and psychological pain. The influence of British surrealist and expressionist painters such as Graham Sutherland and Francis Bacon can be seen in works including ‘Eloi! Eloi! (Lama Sabachthani)’ (1976), a distorted, torturous crucifixion scene in which Christ convulses in agony, his face a skull-like mask, and ‘The Embrace’ (c. 1979), a portrait that sees pain and tenderness entwine…
‘Culture Structure V’ and ‘Culture Structures’ (both 1981) speak directly to the touch points between Lyons' consciousness as a Black person living in British society in the post-war period, and his work as an artist. In these works, human figures are compressed between geometric structures, representing the control and oppression of slavery. Lyons describes how small squares of colour in the composition of ‘Culture Structure V’ recall a painter's palette, referencing the work's creation by a human hand Through the language of painting Lyons reveals the ongoing effect on the psyche of entrapment in the physical and ideological frameworks of colonisation and the resultant constructions of race that still confine us today
John Lyons (b. 1933, Port of Spain, Trinidad), lives and works in Cambridgeshire, England. Lyons moved to England in 1959 to study at Goldsmiths College, later earning an Art Teachers’ Diploma from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Over a 27-year teaching career, he maintained a prolific artistic and literary practice, exhibiting widely and publishing seven poetry collections. His work has featured in major exhibitions including Life Between Islands: British Caribbean Art 1950s–Now (Tate Britain, 2021–22) and No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action (Guildhall Gallery, 2016). Solo exhibitions include Carnivalesque (2024-25, The Whitworth and The Box), Mythopoeia (1997) and Behind the Carnival (1992–94). Lyons has served on national arts panels, adjudicated major awards, and co-founded the Hourglass Studio Gallery and HEADS to promote community arts. In 2003 he received the Windrush Arts Achievement Award. His children’s poetry collection Dancing in the Rain was shortlisted for the 2016 CLiPPA Award and in 2025 won the Cholmondeley Award from The Society of Authors.
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