Essay Notes

Horizon& Sea: Notes on “land sea and sky” [2003-'04]
By Doctor Mark Carroll

Timothy John’s empathy with the understated natural beauty of landscape, captures not only the artist’s strength as a colourist, but the balance between impression and expression – the seen and the felt – that underpins his aesthetic.
John understands well the way that these impulses merge:
‘I do not try to portray the landscape in a strict physical sense, rather, I hope to capture its essence, the light, the colour and the shapes before me, all of which guide me to create an emotional response’.
There is a spirituality that pervades each of his works.
This spirituality is for John, engendered not simply by the sheer natural beauty of that place where sea, land, and sky meet, but by his realisation that to create an object of beauty carries with it an inner conviction, as John puts it:

‘to allow myself the luxury of beauty to exist for beauty’s sake’.

As Wassily Kandinsky during his pre-war Blaue Reiter period was wont to point out, ’to give oneself over to the pursuit of beauty at a time of social and political ugliness, when beauty is perhaps in short supply, carries rewards not just for the artist, but for those who would appreciate their art’, and like Kandinsky, there is a musicality about John’s work that transcends its expressive, formal and technical virtues – it is “Debussyesque” in the subtlety of its colourations and textures, yet “Stravinskyian” in its brooding and occasionally dark lyricism.
Like the panoramas that inspire him, John’s work rewards those who allow themselves a moment of quiet contemplation. But more than this, the works invite we the audience to reflect on the balance between seeing, feeling, and knowing, that, lies not only at the heart of all good art, but of ourselves.

Dr. Mark Carroll
Dr. Mark Carroll lectures at The University of Adelaide, South Australia, and is author of the acclaimed book:
‘Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe’ Cambridge University Press.