Low Down Articles
Artist Profiles - John Hiscock
Article 28 of 73
From the book Artists of the Gatineau Hill by Catherine Joyce. This article first appeared in the "Artist Profiles" column in the November 22, 2006 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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Reaching for the Sun
Recently John Hiscock, a prolific and accomplished landscape watercolorist from Wolf Lake, painted an intriguing self-portrait - an abstract of concentric rings circling a centre of intense white light, with a black arrow piercing its core. The lines are diffuse, bleeding one into the other in a range of colours from dark to light - yet, in effect, a metaphor of startling clarity.
"I am searching for the sun inside myself. It is a question of learning how to see - a quest for the truth, both in the self and in painting. Art is a pure expression of that very deep part of us that we want to give back to the world. But it takes a lifetime of learning, of struggle and of letting go to be able to channel at that depth."
Just as his watercolours encompass the full range of darkness and of light, John's journey has taken him full circle. Growing up with a mother and a grandfather who painted and taught art in the Tweed area, John does not remember a time when he was not involved in some form of artistic expression. "It's in my blood. I can't separate the artist from the man."
His father, a senior forest manager with Lands & Forests, took him on canoe trips, awakening in John an enduring love and reverence for nature. Then at 18, he traveled with his brother to Colombia. This life-altering experience turned him inward on a quest for spiritual truth. Upon returning home, he embarked on a serious program of philosophical reading even as the challenge of making a living deepened his search.
For a while he became a wheelsman on the Great Lakes where at night he could see the play of light on water and feel the full force of storms on Lake Superior. Later he joined the military for basic training where the pressure to "perform or else" nearly broke him. After three years as a mobile support equipment operator he quit the military; his growing reverence for life precluded such a future. Years as a driver in the courier business and then work in construction both grounded him and ground him down as he continued his nightly explorations into the nature of painting and of creativity. Through it all he came to terms with himself and his art.
"God made man in His own image - therefore we are creators. All of life is made up of patterns. You can them manifested in nature, repeated and yet unique - from the hydrogen atom to the human being. As an artist, I must learn how to translate and portray these living patterns on paper - just as I must allow the unique creative resource within me to reveal itself, which is more a question of trust than skill.
"You see, we all create our own reality. But in order to find fulfillment we must clarify our being and understand who we are. It is all a process of becoming, of creating the self that can manifest the vision.
"The key is to remember that there is more fulfillment possible through pain and discomfort on the search than in stagnation and non-exploration. You have to keep reaching - both technically in art and spiritually as a person to find your way."
Now John Hiscock is painting full time, channeling his love of the earth into his watercolours, answering the dark with the intense white light of the self moving out from the centre into the unknown.