John Oxborough’s painting practice is centred around his devout exploration of the human figure. His works are charged and expressive, generating a complex web of visual information from the mere suggestion of form.
Drawing figures from life, Oxborough’s quality of line is intensely expressive; confidently and overtly communicating his forms in just a few strokes of pencil or paint. He manipulates weight, moving from the lightest traceries of shadow, through to deliberate, deep contours that are almost ground into the paper.
Oxborough’s use of colour is often ‘intentionally’ random and may appear jarring or clashing. He varies the application of media; often what appear to be early layers are actually final layers applied spontaneously around pre-existing forms and colours. These random elements challenge his compositions, but can also assist in their development: “Colour can resolve the weight of a composition, it has a form of its own”.
Works are left with large areas that appear ‘incomplete’. This is an intentional device by the artist to leave the narrative of the works largely up to the viewer to interpret – connecting lines to ‘finish’ a chair, a posed body, or a model’s facial expression. Oxborough is aware that a viewer’s interpretation will change depending on how a painting is visually pieced together, a process affected by their perception and memory. To this end he exploits the incorrectness of form, creating engagement so we experience a work, rather that just look at it.
Although rejecting a specific narrative, Oxborough constantly drops hints in the form of symbols without defining their relationship to the viewer. ‘Props’, both imaginary and real, add a sense of theatre to the works, telling us to construct a story from the component parts. Although he may have his own reasons for including these items, the artist deliberately leaves them imperfectly formed and unexplained. They remain as puzzle-pieces to be assembled into the narrative whole, whatever the final form may be.
Oxborough clearly evokes sensuality in his works, yet his pieces are definitely not explicit. The figures are not inherently sexual, but the props and symbols allow us to infer a narrative: Is she wearing a garter belt? Is that a whip? Why is she wearing only one glove? Rather than shocking and alienating the viewer by depicting overt sexual imagery, Oxborough’s approach leaves us safe to explore these elements - if anything ‘dirty’ is found, you can only have brought it yourself.
The eschewing of narrative is closely aligned with Oxborough’s deliberate encouragement of chance elements in his works. This is not to say that the artist does not consider his pieces. Rather, it cements his rejection of a dictatorial approach to the interpretation of his works. Obviously if a gesture just ‘happened’, a definitive meaning cannot be given. This freedom from dictating narrative allows the artist to devote full attention to his abiding concerns: the nature of composition; the way the body is formed and settled; and the formal aspects of colour, line and shadow.
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