Ben Johnson in conversation

Super talk at the National Gallery between the artist Ben Johnson and Colin Wiggins, Head of Education at the gallery.

This talk complimented the current exhibition of Ben Johnson’s work at the gallery which has included him working on a new picture of Trafalgar Square.

It was really fascinating to hear an artist talk about the ethos of his work. He said he was fascinated by numbers and measurements and has always analysed pictures geometrically. It was interesting to hear how the current picture had developed over many years starting with photographs from the gallery roof and how he had then wondered if any pictures in the gallery equated to it. He found Canaletto’s “Stone Mason’s Yard” broke down into the same shapes and proportions.

I liked hearing him talk about the Liverpool townscape in the exhibition as I had seen it in Liverpool as few years ago. He was very moving about how the people of the city had reacted to it and made the picture develop since he finished it.

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