Michael Peppiatt: John, what does London mean to you?
John Lessore: Well, I was born here; it's engraved in me. When I was a child during and after the war, there was dilapidation and decay. I loved this subfusc, scarred city and I have not lost a passion for muted colour. The Slade suited me, with its tradition of broken umber touches. In the 60s, all garish hell broke loose and, though I have tried quite hard to use bright colour, I never felt as comfortable.
MP: When did you become aware of London as a subject?
JL: As a small child, I used to draw, from memory, its people, traffic, streets, and, very frequently, St Paul's. I always wanted to be an artist.
MP: And that was why you studied at the Slade?
JL: I went there because I thought I would be taught to draw. I wasn't taught much about anything and discovered that one can't exactly learn to draw. One can learn ancillary facts, and, by dint of hard work, develop one's nerve or daring. Tom Monnington befriended me, and tried hard to improve my drawing. I still remember the things he said. No one else left much of a mark. He encouraged me to see movement in volume and stasis.
MP: But why did you choose the Slade?
JL: My mother and aunt had been there; I didn't know other schools existed. The only other one i'd heard of, the Royal College, was entirely on the first floor and I was, by then, in a wheelchair.
MP: What did you do after leaving the Slade?
JL: I gained an Abbey Minor travelling scholarship to go to Italy. Next I married and lived in France, where I also feel at home, but two years later, I was back in London.
MP: In the preface I wrote about your Ipswitch paintings, I was very aware of the importance of light. Does it vary in different places for you?
JL: It does. Fortuitously, because I went to France for other reasons, those parts of the north and south where I have most painted are reputed among artists for their brightness, as in Norfolk, the subject matter of the Ipswitch show. Our maritime climate tempers the light in London. And the sky changes throughout the day: time, which you wrote about in the French preface, exerts more pressure here.
MP: In what ways?
JL: Subject matter is fleeting, often more glimpsed than observed. I start fast even if revisions take years. A painting creates its own time and aspires to being a "moment".
MP: Does London's weather affect your paintings?
JL: I am affected by the sky I see on the way to the studio. If i'm working on an outdoor subject, I often find I repaint it on arrival, at least in part, and, of course, that involves everything else too, since the sky dictates the colour and tone throughout.
MP: And when you're painting indoor subjects?
JL: Less so, but even they too, on occasion, get reworked as a result. Light is pervasive by its nature.
MP: Would you say space in your paintings is a variable too?
JL: As a volume or void, no; as air, yes. A body or object and their surroundings appear to me to be composed of light, time and space. If a painting "comes off", it is that these three unite. I want my paintings to feel probable and to exist as moments.
MP: What else are you hoping to achieve in them?
JL: I think it was Charles Holmes who said that a painting must contain Harmony, Variety, Unity and Infinity. For me, that was spot on.
MP: And that's it?
JL: Perhaps I would add risk.
MP: What sort of risk?
JL: When you paint, you can ruin a painting with one stupid touch; but then again, sometimes you can bring it to life with a felicitous one. You never really know what you're doing, and not always when you've done it. Although you have a craft, it's the opposite of being an artisan: you work in hope and fear; one is governed more by intuition than by intelligence.
MP: Is London your favourite subject?
JL: I'm married to London. Other places may have the lure of extra-marital affairs but i've always come back here. I love what's left of the London of my beginnings; I hated what was built from the 60s for a few decades but, now that new buildings and sky-scrapers are clad in reflective surfaces, I think it has begun to be extremely beautiful again. I don't like concrete: it absorbs too much light. Paradoxically, I like painting it. Ungainly or ugly subjects are often rewarding. Anything that already looks rather nice is a challenge from the devil. I don't really have favourite subjects, apart from my wife.
MP: Can you explain why that is?
JL: Subjects are merely visual possibilities that occur without warning; they correspond with, or feed congenial to, some private abstract vision, a yearning towards certain shapes and movements, colours and tones, and so on. But whatever may be important for artists, the spectator should worry about how, not what, we paint.
MP: What other parts of London have you painted in?
JL: While at the Slade, I lived in Battersea, just beneath Clapham Junction. Black coal dust used to float down from the railway like a descent of evil. It invaded the houses, inside and out. Smokeless fuel and clear skies removed all that.
MP: Has anything else changed?
JL: I deeply regret losing our York stone pavements with their subtle colours - modern paving is too uniform, as are roads, some of which were tarred and shingled, some cobbled or of wood-blocks, but now it's all asphalt. The biggest change has been the invasion of electric light, illuminating every inch of every corner, ousting daylight, altering the light.
MP: And after Italy and France?
JL: When I got back, I bought a house in Peckham, as cheerful as Battersea was gloomy, where content've been ever since. Much of the show was painted in the studio a few blocks away. Three large commissions: the Architects, the Paralympians - both of which are in the National Portrait Gallery, but studies for them are in the show - and Globe House, commissioned by Accenture, were painted here, as were my Shoreditch paintings. I may start paintings elsewhere, but I usually continue and finish them in the studio.
MP: Would they have been different if painted somewhere else entirely?
JL: I do believe so, the music of a place creeps in.
MP: Can you attempt to capture the music?
JL: I think not. It gets in through instinct rather than intention. You can't help what you do. Things happen or they don't. You want to make it like and come to life.