John Hoyland: Scatter The Devils

Andrew Lambirth writes that John Hoyland ‘paints pictures which inspire the spirit, which liberate and fire the imagination. He describes imaginary worlds….and encourages us by the beauty and effervescence of his colours to respond to them and contemplate their meaning… These effects are not achieved by chance. The artist controls his subject matter with all the skill and cunning acquired over a long career in order to ensure our response is as he wishes it to be…He stretches our imaginations to capacity.’

This Book concentrates on Hoyland’s most recent work since the late 1990’s. By means of interview, anecdote and quotation, it reveals the imaginative thinking and development of a painter who, refusing to be cast in the role of ‘abstract’ artist – a label he deplores – is constantly reinventing his art and pushing himself to his technical and poetic limits. Like an Elizabethan buccaneer out to win new territory, it’s very much do or die for Hoyland. And in this age of sensation-overload, he still manages to shock the eye; to challenge the collective pulse, to make us see and feel.