The World of John Richard HewittArtist & Writer |
Micro BioTip Of The IcebergI have lived in the USA, Costa Rica and Jordan and I have shipped my art worldwide, including New York, Hong Kong, Australia, throughout Europe and more. I paint highly emotive art and I write highly emotive poetry as well as weird novellas.
JRH Why Are You Here?A Serious Question.Somebody walked through the gallery today, saying that we need more art spaces and that they want more art spaces and that they want to organise more art spaces, and then asked, “do you get people up here?” and then commented on how we would sell more if everything was priced. Not once did they actually talk about the art on display.
JRH OutpouringThere Something In The EtherThat craving to extend and to create; it is a madness that cannot be cured, it is a divine infection to which there is no antidote. It is brutal in its demands and yet gentle in its application. Where is all of this now? Between grotesque billboards? From across the gluttony of an xmas table? Through the endless prodding and poking from chuggers and unskippable ads? This house of mirrors doesn't actually lead anywhere. We need the brutality of creativity to smash the glass and look into a far distance that has been obscured for too long.
JRH I'm Trying To Do SomethingBut I don't know what.There's something going on; I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something happening. Like the original idea of the web before it became cluttered with ‘cookie warnings’ and ‘subscribe pop-ups’. It is one of the reasons why I deleted images from my website and have reverted to a text-based website to try and get people to read, engage, think or something. It is why I have hand-coded my own RSS feed, because I detest social media sharing. Also, I don't need your email address, and I don't have that awful social media fixation on how many subscribers I have. If I get an email response, it’s a result. A letter or postcard would be even better, we’ll see. I just want everything to reboot. I still see lockdown stragglers who don't know how to communicate effectively any more and are happy to sit behind a laptop rather than come and see original art. That is another reason why I got rid of my images. It is utterly mad to be an artist and not show my work online; but I don't care. How does a highly optimized JPG portray the feeling and emotion behind a painting? I want people to get up close and look at the brushwork, the eyes, and to feel something that only interaction with the painting and the artist will reveal. This is beyond financial success, it’s something ‘other’, it’s plain-text, it’s web before web 2.0, it’s drinking coffee with a colleague as your social media, it’s…it’s… I don’t know.
JRH No Images?No Images.As an artist, you would expect my website to be full of imagery - well it isn't. I have a favicon, but even that is a screenshot of an HTML table with specific colours added. I don't do this for copyright reasons, I do it because I truly want people to see the paintings live; not just mine, but all of us at Amanartis, Watford. Everyone is so used to scrolling through pictures, being spoon-fed images from billboards to social media. We see that mentality here in the gallery. People will walk through and glance, or take selfies, or take photos to look at later, rather than actually sitting with the work and allowing something to happen. Introspection has been killed (almost) by social media. There is a craving to be fed the images rather than look at a painting and feel; or to read a description and have your mind reflect the image to you, rather than your phone. So my gallery has no images. There is a title and a hint of the colour palette, all rendered with HTML, not images; and then there is a description that hopefully will allow a vision to arise within you. This is a reboot for the psyche; it is a stand against social media, social media that doesn’t want you to share for the love of art, but because they want you to share so that their content is boosted; in other words they want your product; and ultimately that product becomes you. This is a return to art, and the first step is to take all the images away.
JRH Let Me Update Your SiteToo LateSo, I just received an email from a self-proclaimed ‘web expert.’ I, of course, imagined a huge spider in some remote jungle, but no. This person obviously hadn't read anything on the site as to why I have designed it in this way and how I won't use social media etc. It was a strange reminiscent moment of how I thought all of that ‘web-speak’ was actually important: it just isn't.
So no, thank you ‘web expert’, but I have already updated my site.
JRH
Is This Art?You Tell Me.Is This Beautiful? It is:
But is this art? Well, it took time to choose the colours and arrange them in a pleasing manner. Each colour was considered before placement. This is exactly how I create large oil paintings, except this is a simple HTML table. Art? You tell me.
JRH
Pure HTML?BreatheI don't know what it is, but there is something so satisfying about minimalism. Whether it is in art, in diet, in the wardrobe and in design. It is like a reboot of the psyche, and it allows for new expansion. Whenever I would feel that my art was starting to stagnate, rather than grabbing all the colours I had available, I would revert to an old palette, the Apelles palette, which consists of white, earth yellow, earth red and earth black. Anders Zorn popularised the palette much later, but this ancient Greek palette is, for me, the cornerstone of painting. It is the four base elements creating the universe. Anyhoo, back to HTML. So when I removed all the JavaScript, I then removed all the PHP - which meant goodbye to contact forms etc. Then I thought, “dare I get rid of the CSS?” Then came the luxury of deleting all the files from my webhost just leaving the html files - so satisfying! And so I have the site you are seeing. Validate/not-validate and other arguments aside: does it work? Is it accessible? Does it efficiently give you the information that you want? What about aesthetics? Can we go past the bells and whistles and look at something in a pure state; and breathe? Here is the Apelles palette, sort of, in an HTML table - beautiful isn't it?
JRH
What The Hell Happened?Communication BreakdownThere is a form of communication that doesn't seem to exist any more. A lot of visitors to the gallery walk on in and don't even acknowledge the person at the desk. If you say, “Hello” you might get a nod or nothing. Something has changed, where it’s now all about the desperate need for the product. And many visitors come on in and walk through quickly without taking the time to actually look at the art. I had one lady walk through really fast, taking photos of every painting and then walking out. Did she then sit at home and look at them? I also see this at The National Gallery, London. People taking photos of paintings and then walking on without actually looking at the work. People have been trained to look at images rather than take in art. They scroll through the gallery like they scroll through instagram (it doesn't deserve a capital ‘I’). And they don't know what to do with intense artwork. They are so used to the machine reflecting back to them what it all means that I see them become uncomfortable with self reflection. I remember once when we had a queue at the gallery because the parking ticket machine was broken, so they all lined up waiting in the gallery. No one, not one, person actually turned around to at least look at the art, while they were waiting. They had their backs to everything as they scrolled on their phones. Everyone now just looks down, rather than ‘in’.
Tolerance level low
JRH
Why Poetry?Why Poetry?
Poetry has always been a large part of my life, from Charles Causley and the Puffin Book of Magic Verse, when I was a child, and later on to the joys of Tang Dynasty poetry and Charles Bukowski.
Why No Social Media?No Social Media?I had many social media accounts and not only did they make no difference to my business, they actually became a huge distraction. There were two key moments that finished social media for me. Once, when I wasn't getting the likes I thought I should have, and so I asked myself, “what does the algorithm actually want?” The second moment was on Twitter when suddenly in my timeline came the most aggressive and violent post and I thought, “I'm done.” Twitter is like the street outside my coffee shop in the evenings: aggressive and hostile. Instagram is like many of the visitors at the gallery: they take a photo then move on without taking the time to absorb the art. LinkedIn is endless showboating, and I won't even go into my loathing of Tacky-Tok and Pin-disinterest. So many people come up to me and ask me, “how do people find you without social media?” I just look at them and say, “like you have just now.”
JRH Why This Site?Why This Site?I have spent years embed in code, using flex this and grid that to create complex CSS websites, with PHP databases etc. etc. etc. Then, when I just couldn't do it any more, I reverted to a simple HTML site, with zero CSS. It doesn't even have a mobile version - because it doesn't need to. This site should be lightning fast and viewable on all machines, everywhere. If it isn't; let me know.
Even without the CSS, this website functions and, in my view, looks nostalgically lovely; in fact a simple table aligns everything within the page, and there seems to be no accessibility issues, according to PageSpeed Insights. “The horror of using tables in 2024!” And yet… As for validation, well, even Google's own home page doesn't validate - and I believe uses tables.
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