Biography

Biography

The artist John Falcke lived and worked in West Sussex, where he died in September 2018.

Born in Kensington in 1934, he was the only child of eccentric but loving parents. His education truly began in 1952, at Regent Street Polytechnic, where his interest in the arts was awakened and his originality as a painter released.  

Using marks entirely his own, he captures everyday human experience, freezing chosen moments or actions, by stripping away unnecessary marks, to present poetic images that are simultaneously familiar and distinctive.  There is bold simplicity too in the art materials he employed: hardboard, MDF or newspaper; household gloss or enamel paints, with chalk or oil pastels to add texture.  

It was not unusual for him to spend two years or more on a single subject, tenaciously producing many variations on the one topic. If resolved, the picture was framed and hung at his home, until such time as he revisited the idea. Ever his own harshest critic, there was nothing that might not undergo further change.

Falcke tended not to feel either the desire or the need to show his work beyond his immediate circle. Later in life, however, he was encouraged by friends and family to believe that there was surely a viewing public eager to enjoy a display of his work across more than sixty years. Falcke on The Mall exhibited his work for the first time, at the Mall Galleries in London in March 2018. 

Whether in the sensitivity of his paintings, or in the spontaneity of his provisional drawings, or in the wit of his sculpture, John Falcke created highly personal modernist images, intriguing and profound and beautiful. 

 For more information contact: info@falcke.co.uk

 

For more information contact: info@falcke.co.uk