In the Mood to Paint: Q+A with John Lancashire

We’re excited to introduce John Lancashire, aka Monday Painter, to the gallery. Based in Hastings, John’s practice sits somewhere between instinct and intention, where everyday forms like rabbits, vessels, and flowers become quietly symbolic. His paintings feel like fragments of memory or dreams: emotionally charged, tender, and open to interpretation.

Working primarily in oils and mixed media, John draws on a vast archive of visual material gathered over decades. His process is slow, intuitive, and emotionally led, less about planning and more about allowing the image to emerge. Alongside his original paintings, John also creates hand-embellished prints, each one reworked from a personal library of over 70,000 process photos. These source images might come from nearly completed paintings or early, unresolved experiments, and are brought to life again through layered mark-making and fresh perspective.

In this Q+A, we speak with John about how a painting begins, the allure of hybrid spaces, and why the smallest objects can carry the most meaning.

You often describe your practice as intuitive and emotionally driven. Can you talk us through what it feels like to begin a painting without a clear intention?

Starting a new painting is always the full spectrum of excitement. When I say I don't have a clear intention, that’s not strictly true. I do have intent — it’s just that I may not have a complete plan or picture in mind. And I’m probably trying to avoid building too many expectations around the result. I want there to be some surprise left in it for me.

The way I generally go about things is more like a complex algorithm made up of a few key ingredients. There’s a particular mood — or set of moods — that I like to be in when I paint, so I’ll put myself in front of those emotional states however I can. Music, environment, atmosphere — that all plays a part.

I’ve also got a massive photo library on my phone, full of things I’ve seen and felt compelled to document. That’s usually where my references come from. I don’t do a lot of pre-sketching, and I don’t keep a sketchbook. It’s pretty rare for me to make a study beforehand.

That’s just the way I’ve always approached painting — though it doesn’t mean that’s how I always will. It’s a bit like how I approach life: with a kind of celebration of unexpected outcomes.

Your works often blur the boundaries between still life, landscape, and figuration. What draws you to these hybrid spaces?

I don’t tend to compartmentalise the world — at least not visually. A painting can hold a figure, a flower, and a window into a landscape all at once. These things talk to each other. It’s not always logical — sometimes it’s poetic, sometimes it’s purely compositional. The boundaries between genres don’t interest me as much as the relationships between objects, space, mood, and memory. I find that hybrid spaces allow for ambiguity, and ambiguity invites the viewer in.

Your paintings often feature domestic or everyday objects. What’s the significance of these objects for you?

I paint what’s around me, what I know — the domestic, the familiar. There’s something incredibly rich about the everyday. A cup, a chair, a bunch of flowers — they all hold emotional charge, cultural history, and personal memory. Sometimes these objects feel like little time capsules. And I think painting them is a way of paying attention, of saying, ‘this matters too.’

You’ve mentioned that painting for you is a way of processing life. Can you speak to that a little more?

Painting is how I digest the world. It’s slow. It’s private. It demands attention. There’s no fast track through a painting — and that slowness is something I’ve come to value deeply. It’s not always cathartic, and I don’t paint to get something off my chest. But it is a way of metabolising experience, even if I’m not fully aware of it at the time.

Reoccurring motifs like rabbits, flowers, and vessels appear frequently in your work. What draws you to these forms, and how do they evolve across different works?

These forms lend themselves readily to ascribing some sort of archetype. They’re easy to talk to. They provide a language. For me, they help translate an emotion into an image. That feeling or emotion, I hope, would be different for whoever’s looking at it. The rose can be the confidence or the haughtiness of a rose. Cats can tell a thousand stories just through their body language, their eyes. Everyone has some sort of reaction to a cat. Rabbits — I love rabbits. Or hares. They’re quite mischievous. Rabbits are just great. Water — I love water. I love glass. I love vessels. Vessels support. Vessels transport. Vessels herald something. They present something.