John Button

Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, John grew up on England’s east coast. He studied Architecture in Brighton and worked for many years with exhibition design, interiors and illustration.

After moving to Sweden with his young family, John began painting and exhibiting more actively. More recently he’s expanded his gallery representation beyond Sweden to throughout the U.K, France and to the U.S.A. In the Spring of 2024 he travelled to Japan and had a sell-out show in Tokyo.

In his paintings, he explores landscape and seascape through its patterns and textures, attempting to trigger a memory or a sense of place and ignoring conventional rules of perspective along the way. In his still-life studies, John tries to tease something extraordinary out of his everyday surroundings. Inspiration for John lies all around, from an uncleared breakfast table to an upturned boat on a shingle beach.

John paints with acrylics which he lays on with vigour. After creating an initial abstract composition of shapes and splashes, some semblance of reality normally finds its way in; a mug, a vase, a boat, a jetty… More often than not, he works on hard panels such as plywood or mdf which enable him to scratch and distress the surface. In addition to paint, he uses whatever may be to hand; charcoal, crayons, correcting fluid, oil pastel, wallpaper paste, working layer upon layer until (eventually) something emerges and tells him to stop.