28 Artists&Illustrators
That’sgooddetective work!
It was.ThethingI like about the studio is that what I paint
is aboutthepassageof time, which sounds a bit grand, but
I’mquiteinterestedin how you paint an atmosphere, what
youcan’tactuallysee. It’s not ghosts, but that sense that
somethinghasbeenthere, and it has changed.
WhenI cametothis place, it had very obviously had a
veryparticularuse.Now everything is covered in paint but
backtheneverythingwas covered in oil. How do you hone
inonthat?Thatwasreally what intrigued me.I gatheryouhavea second studio now, is that right?
Yes,I liveinFrancepart of the time. We have a house that
wasbuiltinthe1800s, it was a hospital in the First World
Waranda Germancommander’s house in the Second, but
youwouldn’tknowany of that. All you can see is the surface
resultofa periodoftime and that is what I’m interested in.Yournewexhibitionis called The Studio. Are all the spaces
inthepaintingsinvented or real?
They’rea mixture.The house in France hadn’t been lived in
for 40 yearswhenI found it. I was looking for something
thathadanatmosphere and history, but equally something
I couldbegintostartto work from. Like any artist, it’s a
fascinationwithsomething that in itself is inconsequential.
Thestudiois onlythe starting point, it’s not what the
paintingis actuallyabout.DiscoverhowtheManchester
artist’spaint-splatteredstudio
inspiredhislatestexhibition.
Wordsandphotos:STEVEPILL
IN THE STUDIOHow long have you been in this studio?
We’ve been here 30 years. When we first came, it was an
engineering workshop and nobody actually lived here.
What is now the house downstairs was just a space to keep
carts, it was like something out of the Edwardian period.
This is a desirable bit of London. Was it when you moved?
No, about five years prior to me coming, they were going
to demolish the whole area as slum clearance. You can’t
imagine it. People got together and got it changed to a
conservation area. Clapham at the time was completely
dead. Then there was a stage when everybody else had
moved out and it was just me and it was just derelict really.
What initially appealed about the space?
Well, when I’d left the Royal College of Art as a student,
I’d worked in a squat on Wandsworth Road and then in a
factory. It got closed and we got kicked out. I had to find
somewhere, and I looked all over London. It had snowed
when I walked down the street here and I could see there
were no footsteps in the snow on the steps up to the
studio. I thought maybe they weren’t using it.
John Monks
STEP IT UP
John’s studio is a
former workshop- the old stables
underneath is
his family home.