John Mitchell (1942 – 2014)

Photograph of John Mitchell, © John Mitchell 2008, All Rights Reserved. Via www.johnmitchellart.com

John Mitchell, artist and former head of Fine Art at Wimbledon, passed away in May.

Born in 1942 in Walton-Upon-Thames, Mitchell studied painting at Kingston College of Art in the 1950s.  Since this time he continued to paint, but also began to make sculptures and prints, exploring sequence and experimenting with materials.  He exhibited nationally and internationally including shows at Camden Art Centre, London, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Leeds University Galleries and between 1972 – 84 he had six one person exhibitions at Galerie Swart, Amsterdam.

In an essay which accompanied his exhibition at Lemon Street Gallery in 2011 , David Ross wrote: “It is the passion to find something rather than explain it, to let a set of visual conditions grow and change through the combination of the highly ordered, alongside the intuited, which is the hallmark of John Mitchell’s achievements.”

Free Standing Object – Aluminium and Acrylic
2011, © John Mitchell 2008 All Rights Reserved. Via www.johnmitchellart.com

During his life, Mitchell held two major fellowships, the Gregory Fellowship at Leeds University, 1979 – 81, and the Senior Research Fellowship at Cardiff College of Art 1983 – 86.  He began teaching in 1964 as a lecture at Coventry College of Art and, after several posts which saw him move around the UK, he joined Wimbledon in 1987 as the Principal Lecturer and Subject Leader in charge of Painting.  

Tim Johnson, a technician at Wimbledon, recalls the impressions he made on his colleagues there: “I first met John in 1987 when he came to Wimbledon and I was, and still am, a technician.   

What struck me immediately was the intensity he brought both to his teaching and personal art practice. A theoretical underpinning supported a rigorous process of making in his work, and it was this type of approach that he demanded of his students in theirs. The continual processes of thinking, making, reflecting, analysing and inventing were central to his concerns, and once a body of work was made, required equal acumen and precision in its presentation.

He was intense, challenging and nurturing by turns, and always demanded the utmost levels of commitment from staff and students alike in order to achieve the highest of educational and artistic goals.”

As well as the lasting impression he made on all of his colleagues and students, John left his mark on Wimledon College of Arts long after he retired in 2003 in the form of the wall of the lecture theatre/canteen which he designed, made with colored glass-faced bricks.

Asymmetric and Inverted Frustums. Coloured Glass Faced Bricks, commisioned for the new annexe at Wimbledon School of Art 2003, © John Mitchell 2008 All Rights Reserved. Via www.johnmitchellart.com

George Blacklock, former Dean of Wimbledon and current Dean of Chelsea College of Arts, also has fond memories of working with John: “John Mitchell was an archetypal Artist/Teacher. His work informed his teaching to a remarkable degree without ever falling into any ‘safety-first’ traps often associated with this type of artist and educator.

He took over a Wimbledon Painting course that had been thoroughly overhauled by Bernard Cohen. I would say he added theoretical steel to the skills and practice-based approach of the course. More than that, he made it exhilarating to be an art student right here, right now.

It was this focus on what’s happening now, the contemporary edge he brought to the College that energised the staff and students during his time as an academic there.

He was an artist that embraced high modernism, he was colleagues and friends with the Art and Language pioneers, so understood to a frightening degree the rhetoric and theoretical jousting around the practice of painting and art-making in general in the late 20th century and into 21st.

He was a fervent friend to contemporaries and students alike and was an exceptionally dedicated and persistent artist, and by this I mean that he followed the logic of his ideas and methodology through familiar patterns into new territory. His own artwork attests to the quality of his thinking in its imaginative rigor.”

After his retirement, John moved studio from London to Newlyn in Cornwall to continue his practice as a painter and sculptor.  An excellent artist and a much-loved teacher, he will be missed by all who knew him.

Find out more about John Mitchell on his website.

http://blogs.arts.ac.uk/wimbledon/2014/07/08/john-mitchell-1942-2014/