About Bryan John

I am an expressionist artist based in Sheffield. Who has been painting since July 2016. It was back in 2014, when I picked up a book on Cezanne and read it one night, which began my love of art. I had no real interest before then, believing like many before me that “I just didn’t get art”. I only had the book lying around because I studied him very briefly for an undergraduate course (along with Matisse which I also had a book on), and was packing up my books to move house when I thought I would give it a read. Shortly after, I discovered the German Expressionists, via Van Gogh, Munch and Delaunay, and it completely changed the way I looked at art. Colour had always been important in my life, but when I saw what could be done on canvas I was amazed. I wanted to be a part of it. So one day while my daughter was asleep, I picked up a brush and started painting. It was of a photograph of my daughter which I had taken and I thought looked like a Renoir. I was pleasantly surprised. It was no Renoir of course, but it gave me the confidence to carry on. I imagine I would have stopped had it been bad! I have now settled on a style which i describe as Romantic Expressionism drawing on romantic themes such as the landscape often featuring figures with the colour experiments on the German Expressionists .