This evening marked the opening of a lovely exhibition of work by John Lessore. John, born in 1938, was born into an artistic family. His father was a sculptor and his mother a painter. His uncle was Walter Sickert. He has lived and worked most of his life in London and is essentially a London painter, very much from the same tradition as Auerbach and Kossof but essentially more domestic in his focus and inspiration. Many of his picture highlight domestic situations and the documentation of everyday life.

Lessore is one of those painters who renew your faith in painters and painting. He does not set out to make grand statements or seek to place style ahead of substance. He is a careful, considered painter of the domestic and there is no painting in this exhibition that you would not be happy to have hanging on your walls, and to enjoy every day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The largest painting in the exhibition is called Globe House, and it is a painting about which I know something. It was originally commissioned by the consulting firm Andersen Consulting, now Accenture, and hung for several years in the main reception of their London office. It is a large tryptych of staff at work at what was then a new ‘Solution Centre’ in the afore-named Globe House. The original painting clearly highlighted the Andersen Consulting name and, perhaps for that reason, it was taken down around the time of the name change and eventually returned to Lessore. He has reworked the picture extensively and I blieve it is now a very fine piece, and quite rare as a painting focused on office life.

All in all, this is a full, lively and absorbing exhibition. there was so much work to display that some is hanging in corridors, and some could not be hung at all. I urge you to go and visit the exhibition before it closes in early February.