Born: 1933 Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Year of Migration to the UK: 1959
Biography
Artist, poet, writer, curator and educator, John Lyons was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in 1933. After his mother died, he lived with his three siblings and his grandmother in Tobago from the age of nine, returning to Trinidad to live with his father and stepmother in 1948. Although he successfully passed the Senior Cambridge exam, Lyons had to give up further study to lessen the financial burden on his family. He subsequently passed the Civil Service entrance examination and worked for five years in the Civil Service, during which time he continued with his passion for writing and painting.
He arrived in England to study at Goldsmiths College from 1959 to 1964 and then at the University of Newcastle in 1965. In 1967 he moved to Manchester, during which time, with Alnoor Mitha and Lin Tang, he set up Studio Zamana. In 1969 he showed alongside artists including Scottie Wilson and Polish illustrator, Józef Wilkoń, at the Peterloo Gallery, the Guardian praising his ‘cool, sensitive feel for space’ (Bates 1969, p. 6). Lyons worked in secondary schools for nine years, before becoming an Art and Design lecturer in South Trafford College in 1976, where he remained until 1993. Overall, Lyons taught as an art specialist for 27 years in secondary, further and higher education, all the time continuing with his writing and painting. Lyons’ first full collection of poems, Lure of the Cascadura, was published in 1989 by Bogle L’Ouverture Publications (for which he also designed book covers), receiving a major Arts Council award. Lyons also produced paintings inspired by Caribbean folklore, legends and mythology, a major recurring theme being the Carnival of his native Trinidad and Tobago. As Mitha noted, Lyons’ work was characterised by the use of a ‘loaded painted brush and gestures of intuited spontaneity’ (Unmasking the Psyche). Lyons later said about his artistic practice that ‘Mindful of the quintessentially abstract nature of the process of picture making, I enter into a playful dialogue with the work in which line, shape, texture and vibrant colour are brought together […] I sometimes surrender to the promptings of intuition. The work is figurative but not illustrational and is always an adventure of discovery’ (Williams Art).
After he retired as a college lecturer, Lyons was able to devote himself not only to writing and painting, but also to his involvement with a number of art organisations for the promotion of the visual arts in England. In 1987–89 he was a member of the purchasing panel for the Arts Council’s National Collection and in 1993 he was the community artist in residence for the Tate Gallery Liverpool, tasked with building connections between the community of Toxteth and the Tate Gallery. In 1998 co-founded, with playwright and arts activist, Jean Rees, the Hourglass Studio Gallery and its charity-funded arm, HEADS, with the aim of promoting the visual arts and creative writing in the community in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. Lyons remained on the Board of Trustees until 2009, when it lost its Art Council funding in the general cuts.
Lyons has held more than a dozen solo shows and participated in numerous group exhibitions, including No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990 at the Guildhall Art Gallery, which focused on the radical lives of Guyanese activists Eric and Jessica Huntley and the publishing company they founded, Bogle-L'Ouverture. More recently, he was included in the critically acclaimed exhibition Life Between Islands: Caribbean - British Art 1950s – Now at Tate Britain (2021–22). Lyons has written a number of texts on the practice of visual artists, including the entry on Tony Phillips for the Four x 4 catalogue, an exhibition on installations curated by Eddie Chambers (1991). Alongside his practice as a painter and printmaker, Lyons is a prize winning poet with seven published collections. His illustrated Cook-up in a Trini Kitchen (2009) contained Trinidadian recipes and poems. His Dancing in the Rain: Poems for Young Children (2015) was shortlisted by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) for the CLiPPA Award 2016. In 2003, Lyons received the Arts Council sponsored Windrush Arts Achiever Award. In 2022, alongside first-generation Caribbean diaspora painters Errol Lloyd and Paul Dash, he organised the exhibition Paint Like the Swallow Sings Calypso Cambridge at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. The show explored the complex historical and cultural significance of carnival, mixing the artists’ own depictions of modern carnival with examples of the carnivalesque from Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum collection and Kettle’s Yard, by artists including David Bomberg, Barbara Hepworth, Goya and Picasso. John Lyons lives and works in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, England. His work is represented in UK collections including Kirklees Museum and Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum and Arts Council Collection.
Related books
- David A. Bailey, Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now (London: Tate Publishing, 2021)
- John Lyons, Dancing in the Rain (Peepal Tree Press, 2015)
- John Lyons, A Carib Being in Cymru (Smith/Doorstop Books, 2015)
- Jackie Kay, James Procter and Gemma Robinson eds., Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe Books, 2012)
- John Killick and Myra Schneider eds., Writing Yourself (Continuum, 2010)
- Kwame Dawes ed., Red (Peepal Tree Press Ltd, 2010)
- John Lyons, No Apples in Eden (Smith/Doorstop Books, 2009)
- John Lyons, Cook-up in a Trini Kitchen (Peepal Tree Press, 2009)
- Stewart Brown and Mark McWatt eds., Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
- John Lyons, Voices from a Silk-Cotton Tree (Smith/Doorstop Books, 2002)
- John Lyons, Behind the Carnival (Smith/Doorstop Books, 1994)
- John Lyons, The Sun Rises in the North (Smith/Doorstop Books, 1991)
- John Lyons, Denzil Forrester's Art in Context, Denzil Forrester: Dub Transition, A Decade of Paintings 1980 - 1990 (Preston: Harris Museum and Art Gallery,1990)
- John Lyons, Lure of the Cascadura (Bogle-L’Ouverture, 1989)
- Caribbean Expressions in Britain, exh. cat., Leicestershire Museums, Art Galleries & Records Service, 1986
Public collections
Related organisations
- Anglia Polytechnic University (examiner)
- Arts Council Collection (purchasing panel member)
- Arvon Foundation (tutor)
- Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award (shortlisted author)
- East Anglian Writers (member)
- Goldsmiths College (student)
- Hourglass Studio Gallery (co-founder )
- National Association of Writers in Education (member)
- Peterloo Poets Afro-Caribbean (Asian Poetry Prize)
- The Poetry Archive (member)
- The Poetry Library (member)
- The Poetry Society (member)
- South Shields Grammar Technical School for Boys (teacher)
- South Trafford College (Lecturer)
- The Society of Authors (member)
- University of Newcastle (student)
- The University of Bolton (tutor)
- Windrush Arts Achiever Award (recipient)
Related web links
- Anne-Katrin Purkiss, 'Seven Questions with John Lyons', Art Uk
- Diaspora Artists entry
- Interview with John Lyons for the exhibition 'Paint Like the Swallow Sings Calypso' at Kettle's Yard
- John Lyons, Children's Poetry Archive
- John Lyons, Lancaster University
- John Lyons, No Colour Bar Exhibition
- John Lyons, Peepal Tree Press
- 'John Lyons: Unmasking the Psyche' exhibition pamphlet
- Kadish Morris, ‘I Try to Depict the Sense of Liberation’: What Carnival Means to British-Caribbean Artists', The Guardian, 3 November 2022
- Paint Like the Swallow Sings Calypso exhibition
- Short Film introducing the life, art and poetry of John Lyons
- WIlliams Art
Selected exhibitions
- John Lyons: A Selection of Ten Works, Felix and Spear Gallery, London (2023)
- Paint Like the Swallow Sings Calypso, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (2022-23)
- Where is Home?, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery (2022)
- Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, Tate Britain (2021)
- Cultural Connections, Babylon Gallery (2016)
- No Colour Bar, Guildhall Art Gallery (2015)
- John Lyons, Hot Number, Cambridge (2015)
- Spirit of Carnival, Upper Gallery, The Plough (2015)
- John Lyons: Mythlore, The Apex Gallery (2013)
- Ever After The Honey, Clare Hall, Cambridge (2009)
- John Lyons, Diorama Art Centre Gallery, London (2006)
- John Lyons: In the Terrain of the Psyche, Hourglass Studio Gallery (2003)
- John Lyons: Ovation, Rochdale Art Gallery (1999)
- Evocation, Hourglass Studio Gallery (1998)
- John Lyons: Mythopoeia, Wrexham Art Centre (1997)
- Caribbean Connections, Islington Art Factory (1995)
- Vibrant Energies, Chinese Art Centre, Manchester (1995)
- John Lyons: Behind The Carnival, Huddersfield Art Gallery (1992)
- John Lyons, Castle Museum, Nottingham (1991)
- John Lyons: Salford Museum and Art Gallery (1990)
- Let the Canvas Come to Life with Dark Faces, touring exhibition at Bluecoat, Liverpool; Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry; South London Art Gallery, London; Cartwright Hall, Bradford; Ipswich Museum and Castle Museum, Nottingham (1990)
- Jouvert Print Exhibition, The Paddington Print Project (1989)
- Black Art: Plotting the Course Group, Arts Council touring exhibition, Bluecoat Gallery, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Oldham Art Gallery (1988)
- Caribbean Expressions in Britain, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery (1986)
- The Hayward Annual, Southbank Centre (1982)
- Group exhibition, Peterloo Gallery, Manchester (1969)
