Jo Brocklehurst
“I don’t analyse my reasons for painting my subjects. I just feel instinctively that I want to paint a particular person, it is a compulsion.“
Jo (Josephine) Blanche Brocklehurst (1935 – 2006) was a powerful draughtsperson. For more than 40 years she drew people living and working at the fringes of mainstream society – punks, fetishists, actors, dancers and club-goers.
This exhibition explores Brocklehurst’s work from the 1970s onwards, made in her London studio and in the nightclubs and theatres of Berlin, London and New York.
“The streets are full of marvellous people, you’ve only got to look.”
Aged 14, Jo Brocklehurst got a scholarship to attend Saint Martin’s School of Art in London. She was inspired by the life drawing classes run by Elizabeth Suter who hired unconventional performers as models. After a brief career as a fashion illustrator, Brocklehurst dedicated herself to drawing free-spirited people, unconcerned with her profile or commercial success.
Though fascinated by how people looked, Brocklehurst masked her own appearance. Her dark hair was usually covered with a blonde wig and hat and she wore up to three pairs of sunglasses at a time, even when drawing. Friends of Brocklehurst have said that her ‘disguise’ was a reaction to the prejudice she faced as a young woman on account of her British and Sri Lankan heritage.
Jo Brocklehurst in 1966, Fershid Bharucha
Courtesy of Fershid Bharucha
Miss Jacky Worp, 1978
© Blondes Fine Art
