John Leaf

VALLE de COLONYA POLLENCA. JOHN LEAF contemporary British artist

2020

John Leaf a traditional landscape painter’ – ‘John Leaf a painter of landscapes in contemporary style’. Two opinions, two extremes; both could be true, and both are true! He comes fr...

B. 1950, British In an age of “virtual reality” when the art of picture making is possible through the screen, and imagery is well considered when floating in formaldehyde, it is reassuring to find an evergreen of traditional values. Roy Petley has always lived life to the hilt, but he likes his friends to share his successes. He has known tough beginnings, but is aware of his talent and when he uses it to the full effect, it is devastating. Choosing familiar subjects he is able to embody each with feeling. Each image has something to say – the colour and draughtsmanship put in with a seeming casualness immediately awakening the viewer to the freshness of the work. More astonishing are his continuous successes, for whilst he has already become a legend in his own space, recent exhibitions overseas have proved that in reality his particular brand of figurative art is still very much alive and increasingly in demand. Roy Petley was the first born to what became a large family in Grantham, Lincolnshire in April 1951. Little affection was shown to him, and the only discipline was the bad tempter of his mother; by the time he was five he had been removed from his family and taken to the Woodlands school near Uckfield, Sussex. A home as well as a school for abandoned children. He cannot remember when he first began to draw – ‘Always, always’ is his claim – but it was at this school, and in the charge of his art master whose name he recalls as Price. He was a resident at the school for ten years, and tells a story fit for Vasari in that in being let loose in the art room, in a frenzied flurry of activity, he used in one week all of the material available for all of the pupils for one whole term. Formal recognition of his talent came when in 1967 at the age of sixteen he was awarded a place in the Brighton School of Art. With his family and educational background it had been decided without reference to him that he needed safe career prospect offered by training in commercial art. He found himself compelled to draw carefully and in great detail aesthetically unrewarding objects. When he asked if he might change to fine art he was refused. Regretting only that in some sense he had been betrayed by his art master at Woodlands, he cut short his term at University and hitch-hiked to Italy to see and learn from the great masterpieces that has so inspired him. He settled in Florence, haunting the Uffizi and Pitti galleries, examining with the closest scrutiny everything from Walter Paters...