Born in Birmingham in 1936.
In the late 1950's he met his wife Mo. John became a gardener and worked in Gloucestershire for the next few years in the Rudolf Steiner homes teaching children with learning difficulties gardening. At this time John was writing poetry. In 1960 they moved to Yorkshire and John managed an organic Flour Mill.
In 1962 John and his wife Mo and their family moved to Warwickshire and he started painting. During this time he worked in a nursery as a gardener. John rose at 4am every morning and painted until 6am before he went to work.
It was in 1962 when he decided to become a full time artist.
The Family then moved to Cornwall near Mevagissey where John continued to paint. He had his first solo exhibit...
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Born in Birmingham in 1936.
In the late 1950's he met his wife Mo. John became a gardener and worked in Gloucestershire for the next few years in the Rudolf Steiner homes teaching children with learning difficulties gardening. At this time John was writing poetry. In 1960 they moved to Yorkshire and John managed an organic Flour Mill.
In 1962 John and his wife Mo and their family moved to Warwickshire and he started painting. During this time he worked in a nursery as a gardener. John rose at 4am every morning and painted until 6am before he went to work.
It was in 1962 when he decided to become a full time artist.
The Family then moved to Cornwall near Mevagissey where John continued to paint. He had his first solo exhibition at the Ewan Phillips gallery in London in 1967. During this time he travelled to Spain and Morocco. He stayed in Cornwall, with regular visits to London until 1982.
John and Mo travelled to Ireland that year and finally settled on the Beara Peninsula in West Cork where he and Mo still live.
In 1988 he adopted the Muslin religion, which he continues to study and practice. He travels to Morocco every year to improve his Arabic and many of his drawings are from these travels.
John Kingerlee is one of Irelands leading artists and his meditative, intellectual work with his wonderful sense of colour brings great joy to the viewer seeing his work for the first time.
His figurative work owes a debt to Braque (his hero), Klee and Debuffet as well as the Cobra group of Jorn, Appel, Alechinsky and Corneille. John has never tried to imitate these artists, but has forged his own unique style. Just like Tony O'Malley and Louis Le Brocquy, he never went to art school, preferring to learn constantly studying the great artists of the past.
Kingerlee throws academic cultures out the window and is like a childhood rediscovered with all its freshness and dreams, he seeks inspiration from the primitive peoples with their totems and magic signs and from the culture of folk art, naïve art and above all the art of children. His work literally fizzles with energy as if seen through the eyes of a child creating friendly innocent like beings, goblins and animals from a cosmic world. There is no threat here, just a positive message of hope and optimism.
In his landscape painting he is a master of the Beara Landscape. These wonderful abstract landscapes sometimes with heads included show a re-awakening of the genius of Patrick Collins but are much more hard edged and the finished work worked over long periods that can take up to none weeks to dry. For Kingerlee the material is the paint itself and in that respect he is not dissimilar in quality and style to the work of Blackshaw, McSweeney, Collins, Souter and Nancy Wynne Jones.
His head paintings are worked and re-worked over long periods and the landscape is sometimes sculptured on top of these portraits.
Kingerlee has remained true to himself for the last forty years and will continue this way every time he paints at the easel.
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