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JOHN Lessore works in a small, defiantly drab room in Peckham, south London. The parquet floor of the office, which was once an estate agent, is now scuffed, the cracked Venetian blinds are down and the fluorescent strip-light is off. The first thing one wonders is, did he inherit or paint the sludgy mint-green on the walls? On balance, he probably chose the colour himself. The studio is crowded with works in progress, all in muted post- war shades. Neon orange has not appeared on his palette yet. “There were no bright colours in the Fifties — mid-purple was as bright as it got. If you look at things, they aren’t that bright,” he says. His paintings usually contain groups of people engaged in some activity: dancing, carrying tea trays, eating breakfast. Narrative is not important; the shape they make in the composition is. Lessore says that he is “very conscious of composition. I want every shape to lead into the next in a convincing way.” In the strict sense, he is not a realist painter, but one who captures the spirit rather than the facts. Although his pictures are heavily populated, he doesn't see them as portraits. “I usually have one person who is real, a few figures who are composites and one who is nobody at all. I'm bad about clothes — I never notice what anyone is wearing - I‘m more interested in the human presence. ” It was perhaps inevitable that Lessore, a handsome man dressed in a Breton striped jumper and blue drill trousers, became a painter, despite being in a wheelchair since he was I6. His father was a sculptor; his mother, Helen, founded one of the most influential post-war art galleries, the Beaux Arts in Bruton Street, London. Becoming an artist was, Lessore says, “the natural thing to do. I thought artists were normal; it was other people I thought were bizarre. My mother had a tremendous effect and I learnt more from her than anyone else. The only thing she didn’t bother about was drawing. I had to go to the Slade for that." He doesn’t think that being in a wheelchair has necessarily affected the way he paints. “I have the same horizon as Toulouse-Lautrec. I see everything from 4ft 2ins; so I suppose it has influenced my subject matter in that I will never climb to a fourth floor of a house and paint a street scene. But l tend to paint what occurs.” © John McEwen and The Sunday Telegraph |