John Lydon “Jonny Rotten”
This picture used a looser style of painting with less emphasis on minute detail. It is essentially an exercise in trying to convey the atmosphere (or the mood) of the moment. The directed lighting, off-black background and the palette used make the image almost “baroque” in its style.
The subject has been adapted from a photograph showing Jonny Rotten at a Sex Pistols concert in the late 1970s during the zenith of the British Punk movement. Highly controversial and aggressive to the point of violence, the Sex Pistols and their entourage rocked the British social and political establishment for a few brief years, drawing the wrath of the British Press with their scandalous behaviour. Needless to say, the disenchanted youth of the time loved it and emulated their style, so did numerous other associated bands that followed. Punk was a phenomenon or perhaps an attitude that to me is too broad to define but is nevertheless a fascinating chapter of British social history. Its influence on western art, fashion and music in the generations that have followed has been profound and far reaching.
This moment, showing Jonny Rotten clinging to the microphone, pretty much epitomizes the unsustainable nihilistic excesses of the punk scene at the time. If anger was an energy, then it was finite as he either looks exhausted or fed up with the whole thing that the punk counterculture had become (or both). None of it really mattered in the end, which as far as John Lydon was concerned, was probably the point. It was another cycle of generational angst and rebellion against everything. However, beneath Lydon’s hell-raising image was a highly articulate individual with an insightful and quick-witted intelligence that I could appreciate. He confronted and questioned mainstream cultural values of the time, ruffled a few feathers in the process and had the courage to do it - then said B*****ks to it all.
Title: John Lydon “Jonny Rotten”.
Medium: Digital Painting on MacBook Pro using Sketchbook.
Completed: 15th November 2023.
