John Tattersall Prentice
John Prentice is an artist and an engineer and throughout his life he has combined the two professions. With degrees in civil and highway engineering he has followed a career of lecturing on engineering subjects whilst continuing to develop his painting and print work. Emerging from four years of military service Prentice studied painting for four years at Camberwell Art College under Coldstream, Pasmore and Rogers followed with a year at Goldsmiths college, etching with Paul Drury. After three years teaching at Torquay and Paignton Art Schools he returned to engineering.
Over a career spanning six decades Prentice has followed the London Group tradition of objective painting. In this he has aimed by observation to realize the subject matter on to canvas with a commitment to the truth of perception. Throughout this time he has continued to develop his painting, working on traditional lines with a particular interest in landscapes and portraits. Prentice’s work has been exhibited in galleries in the UK, Canada and USA, including the London Group, the Royal Academy of Art, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Printmakers Council.
In recent years Prentice has worked on the structural power of colour, developing a colour theory which aims to advance the current ad hoc approach to this decisive element in painting. For the interaction of colour to be fully explored a comprehensive standard is the first requirement. With his scientific background Prentice has built a coordinated colour model which aims to give artists a grasp of colour control, as has been available to musicians by the musical scale and it’s complex enrichments.
In his book “Colour Plane” Prentice covers this work and examines the use of a coordinated colour standard in painting. With developed classical notions of order and harmony his book and his recent painting resulting from it aim to show a new direction