Vivid memories of carnival invite you in
John Lyons' exhibition at The Whitworth whisks you away to an intoxicating riot of colour, music and masked dancers
I’ve been looking forward to writing about the exhibition featured in this newsletter for a few weeks, since I sat with John Lyons in front of his paintings and listened to him talk about art in ways that gave me a new perspective of his work. In 20 years of interviewing artists, this was right up there among the top few - and I hope I have been able to convey at least some of that impression below. It is well worth a trip to the Whitworth - but if you need a sweetener (no pun intended) then these photos of the cake in the gallery’s cafe should do the trick.
A lifelong fascination with colour doesn’t end at 90
In the silence of the gallery, John Lyons’ carnival paintings are playing tricks. Inside your head, a soundtrack crescendos in a burst of steel drums, calypso rhythms, jostling crowds and laughter. You can almost smell the sour sweat of the dancers and the spice of the street food, and is that the brush of fabric you feel against your arm as a costumed devil lurches mock-menacingly towards you?
You may never have been to carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, and yet for a moment you will feel as if you are right there, experiencing it through all your senses with the very best of guides showing you the way. Lyons may work mostly in paint, but he conjures more than images in his works.
His memories of his childhood encounters with carnival remain vivid: “I remember we were living in Port-au-Spain. We had an apartment in those days because my father was just doing his trade, design of shoes. So you’d step on to the pavement from the front door, straight on. And that street was very noisy. I remember hiding behind my mother’s skirt when I saw the devil coming up and dancing. It was scary.
“Eventually I began to feel awed by it all, especially the masqueraders with their paint and costume. It was overwhelming.”
His retrospective, Carnivalesque, at the Whitworth in Manchester shares this overwhelming sensation. Stepping inside the first room is a little like stepping out on to that street in Port-au-Spain in the week before Easter. Instantly surrounded by leering masked figures - haughty owls, devils with eyes blazing, mischievous Jab Jabs - and crowds of dancers. And so much colour that you have to look at the floor to rest your eyes. Moments frozen in time yet still somehow moving, their eyes following you around the room, their bodies stamping, arms lifted into the air.
They’re intoxicating and dangerous, and you can imagine the impact they must have had on a young boy already fascinated by the world and its colour.
“Trinidad is a place of colour, and a semi-sense of colour,” says Lyons, who was born in Port-au-Spain in 1933. “I just love colour. I make a joke when I’m mixing colours on my palette. Sometimes I go ‘mmm, that soup’s delicious’.”
Lyons started drawing as a child when he was living with his grandmother in rural Tobago, where he would save up pennies to buy charcoal and collect off-cuts of newsprint from the local newspaper office.
“She had lovely garden flowers, zinnias, and what did I do? I used the flowers to colour my drawings. And they were digging a new path and I found some chalky stones that I used. I was in nature, using nature to do my expression,” he says.
When he was 25, Lyons arrived in London to study art at Goldsmiths College, which he says opened his eyes to different artistic approaches before he eventually settled into his own style. The second room in the Whitworth exhibition takes visitors through this artistic and intellectual journey, showing his experimentation and exploration of the formal qualities of painting to analyse structures within society.
Having moved to Manchester in 1967, where his teaching roles included lecturer in art and design at South Trafford College, he began developing his own symbolic language based on Trinidadian folklore and carnival - the subject of this exhibition’s third room. In 1998, he settled in Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, where he set up Hourglass Studio Gallery with his partner, the writer and theatre practitioner Jean Rees. They hosted classes and workshops for all ages, as well as exhibitions and performances.
As well as a painter and sculptor, Lyons is a published poet and cookery writer, and was a member of the purchasing panel for the Arts Council, where he advocated for diversity in its collection. Recordings of him performing some of his poetry are available to listen to in his retrospective.
“When you get older you see art on a different level and realise how interrelated everything is,” he says. “I realised that the same elements used for painting or writing poetry are there for cooking as well. Because you’ve got to understand texture, taste, time, the colour. And you have to measure whether you should put in less or more, and if you use more then how do you reduce it? You’ve got to build things up gradually.
“But there’s another thing as well, that’s more universal. I always remember [author and biologist] Rupert Sheldrake saying, when we went to a lecture a long time ago, that what you see out there is an extension of your mind. So when I look at things out there now, I am those things I am looking at because everything that is making me be aware of that is happening in my head and in my feelings.”
“Awestruck,” is how he describes the feeling of standing inside the gallery, surrounded by 80 of his works that he created over six decades. And, at the age of 90, it is inspiring him to look again at his practice: “The process is more important than the end product, the end product will take care of itself. I work intuitively and I’m embracing uncertainty. I’m not scared of being uncertain because I’m walking ahead. I’m not sure where I’m going to end up but I know I need to go on.”
John Lyons: Carnivalesque is at the Whitworth Art Gallery, in Manchester, until August 25.
On the bookshelf
Cook-up in a Trini Kitchen by John Lyons
John Lyons’ passion for food and cooking led him to write this collection of more than 150 Caribbean-flavoured recipes paired with watercolour paintings, drawings, poems, stories and anecdotes.
Dancing in the Rain: Poems for Young People by John Lyons
John Lyons painterly eye comes through in this collection of poetry aimed at 7 to 11-year-olds but enjoyed by all ages, as he examines the world around him with wit and empathy.
These book links are affiliates connected to Stored Honey’s bookshop.org page. Should you decide to buy them, the small commission will go towards Stored Honey’s running costs.
Thank you for reading this week’s Stored Honey. I have a busy week ahead, including my own graduation (this time a post-grad in Journalism Innovation and Leadership at the University of Central Lancashire, which in fact inspired me to set up this newsletter), so I didn’t think I would have time to experience much culture. But a friend and her partner are visiting from Belfast and I’ve promised to show them around Liverpool on Monday. They are also spending a few days in Manchester this week. Have you been to anything/anywhere interesting lately that I should take them to? I would love to hear your suggestions.
You can get in touch on X/Twitter, in the comments or by dropping me a line at tostoredhoney@gmail.com.
See you on Tuesday with our arts and culture news bulletin,
Laura