Heyoka Magazine:  Can you please tell me when you first discovered painting and what were your first paintings like?

JK:  I started drawing and painting a lot at the age of six. As I grew up I painted a lot from my imagination. I took A level art and felt a bit disillusioned and decided to go to university. I later regretted this and kept on life drawing. I went into journalism and started to have a very busy, successful career on a national newspaper, but about 15 years ago I started painting seriously. I went to a teacher in Chelsea on Sundays. He was a crabby old Scotsman, hated his pupils, didn't welcome anyone in, but he had the knowledge I wanted. At that time it was all life painting and still life. I have tried to let ideas come in to my work, and to focus on themes that interest me. "Look into your heart and paint," to misquote Shaw.

 

HM: In your painting  "The Death of Sandy", There is something very dream-like and allegorical about this particular piece. You have used some beautiful colours, like Prussian blues against the old man's silver hair and flesh tones. Also the colours in the calico looking cat resemble camouflage and the ox blood red canoe really stands out in contrast with the flesh and ocean sky at night.

What inspired this painting and is this made with oil?

JK: It is oil on board. I found the cat's sudden death on the road hard to cope with, esp as I had found the cat in the Congo, brought him back to the UK and he'd been in quarantine for six months. He had a few months with me then he was killed here, on the road. He had lost one eye in Africa and couldn't see very well.

I found the Greek myth about the dead crossing over the river Styx, rowed over by Charon, very comforting. There is no particular misery attached to it, the dead have their own kingdom. I liked that idea at the time.

 

If  we could undo psychosis 2

 

 

 

HM: "Anxiety"  - When you set out to make a painting like this, is there a kind of mind set, emotion, spirit, energy, that you wish to capture from the sitter and do you work mostly from photos?

JK:  No, I do a lot of self portraits - this was a self portrait! My head was on fire with anxiety.

 

 

 

 

 

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Happy Family

 

 

 

HM: I see something similar in the way you painted "Amaryllis " and "If we could un-do psychosis one"  The wilting  plant etc.  This man looks really normal but wilting inside. Brings to mind Erik Fromm's assessment of malignant narcissism and his "Syndrome of Decay".

JK; Amaryllis was about fears of approaching the menopause and being past fertility.

 

Amaryllis

 

The Death of Sandy

 

 

 

 

HM: This next painting has caused much controversy in the UK .  Looking at it, and hypothetically not knowing who the woman is with the grey hair and teddy bear and child on her lap. She looks like what a lot of middle aged English women look like. Apathetic, anxious, withdrawn, lonely etc.

 

When you find out that this is a portrait of a serial killer, is when it boomerangs and it takes on sinister connotations in the viewers mind.  Why do you believe that this one in particular caused so much controversy and problems in the minds of certain viewers?

JK:  That is interesting that you mention how Myra looks, without knowing her.  She went to prison aged 23, when I was ten. I was very scared by the whole thing, but over the years I came to sympathise with her. She should have been released but attention in the tabloid press made it impossible.

I took a photo from Weekend Magazine, or a normal English family, took out the Dad and substituted Myra, to see how she would look if she was allowed to be part of a normal family situation again. I could see that it wouldn't work, it jarred, but that was not her fault.

 

 

 

Anxiety

 

 

 

HM: The old woman with the silver hair in "happy family" looks like the Queen of England and not happy at all. The man next to her in the Hawaiian shirt looks like he's semi faking the smile. The woman to his right looks almost frightened and the boy looks like he has been forced to sit and does not want to be there.  Can you please tell me about this painting?

JK: You are right about all those things. This was a photo of my brother, his then wife and son, with my mother replaced by the Queen. I was making a contrast between the perfect family life represented by the Queen, and our own, which was terrible at the time.

If we could undo psychosis 1

 

HM: What inspired "If we could undo psychosis 1" ?

JK: I wish that certain aspects of history, the Holocaust for instance could just be undone. If we could retrospectively give Hitler therapy for instance, in the same way I wish that evil people could be changed, just by taking a pill or something.

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