Collaborating with chaos

Wednesday, 28th May 2008

Andrew Lambirth talks to the artist John Hoyland about his life and work

John Hoyland was born in Sheffield in 1934 and went to art school there before gaining a place at the Royal Academy Schools and coming to London. He first made his name in the Sixties for bold abstract works which entirely rejected the observable world and dealt exclusively in shape and colour. (A selection of these paintings along with some gouaches, all from Hoyland’s own collection, is being shown at Nevill Keating Pictures, 5 Pickering Place, St James’s Street, London SW1, 020 7839 8386, from 11 June to 4 July.) From 1967 he spent increasing amounts of time in America, associating with such artists as Rothko, Newman and Motherwell, but in the Seventies he returned to settle in England.

‘I’ve managed to make a living out of painting — a precarious one. When I came back from New York in 1972, the big announcement had been made — it hadn’t hit America — that the death of painting had already occurred. I’d had a posh job here, principal lecturer at Chelsea [1964–70]. When I gave that up, William Scott said to me, “You’re mad, that’s the best job in London: three days a week and seven months’ holiday a year with pay.” But I’d heard this David Sylvester interview with de Kooning. De Kooning said that he thought it was important psychologically to put “Artist” in your passport not “Artist/Teacher”. So I decided I was going to do that and get out of teaching. Looking back on it, it was a smart thing to do.’

Why did he come back? ‘It was partly private. My girlfriend at the time was a singer. I learnt a lot from her and really enjoyed being around that music scene and meeting all those guys — Thelonious Monk, people like that. But the trouble was that she wanted me to travel with her. The thing is, if you’re an artist, you’ve got to stay in a room on your own and work. You can’t be always hanging around late at night for the second show. I’m an early riser. And I missed the richness of Europe and my friends. So it was a combination of things.