Milton Keynes

John M E Butterworth Retrospective

Currently on display in the Climbing Wall Viewing Gallery on the first floor of Xscape, this eclectic range of work represents some of the surreal works of the late John Butterworth.  The gallery is free to enter, and is open daily from 11am.

Artist Biog

John, born in London, did his first original painting in his own surrealist style at the age of thirteen. While still at school his style changed to Cubism and Decorative Abstraction. Then later while working through some figurative work which he called Curvist, his style became System or Hard Edge or a combination of both.

He studied at Isleworth Polytechnic on a pre-diploma course, Norwich School of Art on a DIP AD course and Amersham College, where he gained a Bucks Art Diploma with a distinction. In 1982 he settled in Milton Keynes, where he lived and worked for 24 years. His 9 solo exhibitions included Stantonbury Campus, Northampton University, the Wycombe Lancaster Arts Centre and Camden Art Gallery. Group exhibitions included the Exhibion Gallery CMK., The Silbury Group CBX exhibitions and Gallerie 64, Hendaye, France.

John once said of his paintings.

" They are arrived at by mathematical formulae, they are highly organised, complex, consistent and coherent mathematical and logical expressions of universal natural law, each painting is worked out by having its own rules of composition which govern the entire structure and colour of each individual work. They express the harmony of the universe, the hidden order behind it, as harmonious and serene, peaceful in expressing stability without nuclear weapons. All my work is aimed at a fairer world for the poor",

In the last ten years of his life he discovered a totally different style which he developed alongside his other work, With the help of a computer, he would combine photographs of religious paintings with photographs taken from telescopes of distant parts of the universe: the sky in the painting being replaced by a carefully chosen stella image and the combination expressing, in John's words "the majesty of the creator of the universe". These pictures gave him great satisfaction, considering them his most important work.

John suffered with the mental illness schizophrenia all his adult life, but heroically, never gave up his ambition to produce great art.