The final years....
In the last decade of his life although John still sold work it was only to people who approached him directly. He began to concentrate on projects that interested him purely from an artistic point of view and to buy back paintings of his own as they began to come onto the market again. John was always more interested in painting than in promoting his work and as a result, despite the critical acclaim he received in the national press in the early years, his popularity was limited largely to the North-East. He often half-joked that he would only become famous after his death. On the night he died John’s family decided to work towards making sure that his legacy lives on.