John Hoyland | Flying Wild

Eames Fine Art is delighted to announce an exhibition of work by John Hoyland RA (1934 - 2011). In partnership with the John Hoyland Estate, the exhibition features etchings, monotypes and other works on paper from the late 1970s to mid 1990s.

'Flying Wild marks what would have been John Hoyland’s 90th birthday year.

When considering Hoyland’s five decades of creative output, you cannot fail to acknowledge his fearless approach to his work, born out of a passion for the wider world, cultures of far-flung places, away from the grey of his native Sheffield. From his first trip abroad as a student on the Cote d’Azur, to his many years spent visiting Jamaica with his wife Beverley, he was constantly driven to find new and surprising visual poetry. Back in the London studio these experiences fed into the music, heat and light of his paintings and allowed him to create images that seem to have come from another dimension. Hoyland was a tireless traveller of the imagination.

This expansive mindedness and willingness to ‘try anything’ freed him up to create some extraordinary bodies of work, including ceramic and glass sculptures, theatre sets and costumes for the Ballet Rambert, and a mosaic mural for the Rome Metro. However, Hoyland’s printmaking is as much a vital part of his artistic legacy as his painting, showcasing his innovation and mastery of colour and form.

Printmaking involved a different sort of artistic journey - from the isolation of his painting studio to the social environment of the workshop - the necessity of working collaboratively with master printmakers forced a welcome change in mindset. Without surrendering his vision, Hoyland needed the printmakers’ expertise and technical knowledge. Labouring and risk-taking together allowed for ‘unexpected encounters and intuitive irrational choices’ during a process where one could equally ‘talk and chat and have a laugh and listen to the radio’1 . Hoyland experimented with various techniques, including screen printing and lithography, etching and monoprinting, pushing the possibilities, subverting the norms, allowing him to explore texture and layering in unique ways. His prints of the 1960s followed his paintings, but by the early 1980s, the prints begin to have their own independent life, their own ways of transforming the poetry of the world into varied powerful and surprising images.

In this selected survey of works on paper, we explore the relationships between his printmaking and painting, where these practices overlap and where they differ to offer a snapshot Hoyland’s practice from 1978 to 2006.'

- Wiz Patterson Kelly, John Hoyland Estate