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Joash Woodrow - critical reviewsby Glyn HughesThe story of Joash Woodrow is an extraordinary and heart-wrenching one that might have been concocted by the Disney Corporation, and might someday be told by it, to judge by the attention he is beginning to attract. The artists lifetime’s output was discovered in the year 2000, by chance or serendipity – and some of that output is likely to stand with the best of English art of the past century. For all of his lifetime he confined most of his interest to a few square miles of what to most people would be the least inspiring landscape conceivable: the industrial wasteland of northern Leeds. There is indeed (or rather, there once was) a whole genre depicting this kind of squalor, in obvious colours and tones the likeness of stale gravy. The point of this piece, though, is to define what is magical about Joash. When I saw them, in Leeds City Art Gallery and at 108 Fine Art, what swept me away, besides the constant excitement and dash – it never seemed to have deserted him throughout his eccentric life – was the visionary brilliance. There was something akin to Van Gogh, in that each picture gave one the sensation of having scales removed from ones eyes; of seeing for the first time (even if it occurs time after time, in picture after picture) the world in its beauty, as it truly is. Or perhaps I was seeing the brilliant light that in a spiritual sense lies behind the world of forms - the perception of which ultimately gives our lives meaning. And I was looking at depictions, not even of obviously bright things, a cornfield or a sunflower, but at a derelict shed, or a pylon atop scraggy wasteland. As with Van Gogh, such purity of vision came out of obsession and solitude. After the first influence, (in Joash’s case, Picasso’s) there was no other. There was perfection without adulteration, and if he had not been so totally removed from the Art Scene, by his nature and especially his inability to face rejection, he could not have achieved it. Glyn HughesGlyn Hughes, trained as a painter, has published six novels, three collections of poetry and two volumes of autobiography. He has been awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize, the David Higham prize, and has been shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. His most recent work has been several radio plays, and a book of poems in preparation. www.glynhughes.co.uk
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