Refections

Reflections on a conversation with the artist
JOBO
By Professor Antoine Faubourg

1980 was a crucial point in Jobo's development. In that year he decided to abandon composing serious music and devote his attention to the visual arts and make painting his main vehicle for his creative output. Also, it was the year he changed his name to Jobo. This name is derives from taking the first two letters for his first names: JOnathan and BOris. He found the name Jonathan Clifford-Smith far too pompous for a painter at the time. Now we all know him as simply Jobo.

At this time he had recently completed a piece for orchestera titled Surface Space Seven, this intense composition was really an abstract expressionist painting for string orchestra. The great Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, one of Jobos heroes, described this work as "abstract painting in symphonic sound" . He christened Jobo, the man who paints music; a title the artist greatly enjoyed.

Partly, it was Lutoslawski's influence that made Jobo give up composing and start a long gestation period on the Isle of Mull, off the West Coast of Scotland; it was there he found his voice as a serious painter.

To fully appreciate Jobo as a visual artist, one has to understand that up to that point in his life, music dominated his creative output. He was only 21 in 1971 when he composed the acclaimed electronic piece for a sound painting room at the Tantra exhibition at london's Hayward Gallery.

"I have always been a painter really, after all its in my blood, I just used sound and time for a while instead of paint and space. The thing that really gets me is, that painting is a static statement in time, where all the visual information hits you full on in one glance, where music, moves in time to slowly reveal its wonders to you in a controlled manor, bar by bar and always in time. Music is controlled by time and to some respect, painting is timeless.
I find it quite extraordinary how people spend such a brief time booking at paintings in galleries compared to music, stories or plays where they have to listen to the whole piece for it to reveal its secrets. Do we really have the intellectual capacity to absorb all the visual information and react to it in a mere moment; maybe in our fast moving world we have developed that skill."

Personally, I agree with him, most of us do not give the visual arts a chance: looking at a painting should be done with care, not like casually glancing at an advertisement in a magazine.

This now brings me to a crucial and haunting theme through out Jobo's work: that is the concept of time. To some degree to really understand this artist, one has to comprehend his relationship with time.

"My life changed when I was 15 when I first read the four quartets of T. S. Elliot, the opening lines of the first quartet, Burnt Norton, have haunted me ever since"
"Time present and some past are both perhaps present in time future."
In the catalogue of his 2001 Amsterdam exhibition, Jobo describes his work as "my art is about mans relationship to sex, time and eternity, the very real reason for living"

So, since 1980, Jobo has moved on a great deal as both a painter and intellectual, his work has taken on a confidence and maturity, yet still always playful to the voyeuristic eye. To a certain degree, over the years, he is painting the same picture over and over again in different guises, like the same actor playing different roles. In musical terms, this would be theme and variations. This reminds me of Igor Stravinsky's bitchy statement on Vivaldi, "He just composed the same concerto hundreds of times"

Nevertheless, I do take great delight in seeing the latest paintings from this highly satisfying artist: each new image gives me a greater insight into, dare I say it, the visionary world this fascinating painter occupies. He is without doubt a very special artist.

Like Paul Klee, his work is relatively small and intimate, yet containing in a small space the power of a very large canvas; again I quote from the artist.

"The greatest emotions are profoundly private. So paintings have to be if they are worth calling a work of art. Art is about honesty, even if one is cowardly hiding the truth with a blushing brush of unconsciousness"

Jobo works slowly, almost maniacally starting a new picture, alas soon to leave it to rest for a while, returning later, often many times for reworking before completion. This process may span many years.

"My best pictures I take to hell, and then, when the time is right, I bring them back for completion. Sometimes they don't make the journey home."

The difficulty with his work to the uninitiated or unwilling is he does not play to the fashion elements of his more popular contemporaries, which puts one in a quandary when categorising his style, as with Edmund Munch a hundred years before him.

Jobo paints solely what he deeply believes in, that is the quest for the meaning of life. This project he undertakes without compromise, producing some wonderfully questioning, yet comforting timeless images: some being icons of our time.
For me, I regard Jobo as connoisseur's artists of life and death. With Jobo, life and death are a full frontal display with out the arty-craftiness and security of being in vogue.

Finally, I quote from the last line of his poem, How's that. This silmuntaneously, reveals the profound artist and the clown.

"The day I was born my funeral started, well before I first farted"