Invisible man strives to reach across barriers

JOHN HOYLAND seems firmly linked with Swinging London, yet he is from Sheffield and retains more than a hint of his regional accent. Although very English in his quirky personality, he does not like his native country much a trait he shares with other British painters past and present. Hoyland yearns after the exotic and the colourful, has travelled a lot (including the Caribbean) and is on record as saying. "I'd love to make paintings that could cross social, linguistic and cultural barriers in the way that music does."

After early art training in Sheffield, he studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London, and also attended evening classes. William Turnbull, the sculptor, told him about Abstract Expressionism, and he also attended a course of lectures with Victor Pasmore, one of England's early abstractionists "who explained the whole context of Modernism" Although the world knows Hoyland as an abstract artist, he himself says. "I was a figurative painter for about eight years.

What "jump started" him was being shown with young contemporaries in group exhibitions. The end of the 1950s was a lean period travelled at the time, you didn't have money." This exposure led to his inclusion, in 1960 in a group show called Situation, which he says was a turning point in British art at the time.

Shortly after, he and a few others of his age group were signed up by the prestigious Martborough Gallery, where he stayed for three years. He was "thrown out" when they found they couldn't sell his work "it was too big, and nobody understood it".

Bryan Robertson, a key figure at the time in the London art scene, offered to show him at the Whitechapel Gallery, which was "very big at the time". A whole new generation emerged from there, including Bridget Riley and Peter Blake. After that, Hoyland began to encounter more respect and interest from dealers, and eventually was taken on by Waddingtons. In 1966, the Tate Gallery bought one of his pictures, and Hoyland was now well launched.

Always restless to get abroad, he lived and worked in New York for nearly two years, serving as artist in residence at one of the many universities, and kept a sub let studio in the fashionable Soho area. He had "quite a lot" of shows in the city, and became very friendly with the Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell, who was married to the painter Helen Frankenthater. Rothko lived next door to him, so I met him a number of times. I met Barnett Newman too he was full of mischief.

Motherwell was a beautiful guy, very generous and kind. I had met Clement Greenberg, the critic, already in London he saw my Whitechapel show and, said I cannot entirety dismiss it, which was a compliment coming from him."

Hoyland was also friendly with New York artists of the younger generation, such as Noland and. Olitski, and with the English sculptor Anthony Caro we made a trip to Rio together" But much as he admired, and still admires, Rothko and his contemporaries, Hoyland feels now "they painted themselves into a corner. They were doing sublime, wonderful paintings, but they'd not leave any window, open for anybody. I think that is why I turned back to European art.

Hoyland believes "art is about making transformations", and adds. "I don't like symmetry." He also says. "Artists live in the real but most of the time they are invisible. Sometimes they are wheeled out for public occasions." Recent abstract art seems to him "like old soup served up hot" but equally he is "unmoved by realism, either in painting or on the stage." Matisse, Picasso, Miro are all masters whom he admires. "Motherwell gave me a book on Miro which he had edited himself. I saw from it that he had had to get back to nature, and that so many modern painters had got into a trap.

HE has diverse cultural interests, is rather drawn to tropical climes, and says that he has never believed in the dominance of European cultural values. "London, and perhaps the whole of England, to me does not seem to possess any innate poetry. This small, bland, mean little island and its licensed eccentrics.

I want to reach out across barriers. My painting is about graffiti, tropical tight, cracked pavements, modern dance, jazz, dawns, atolls, flowers ..."