Essays by John McSweeney - John McSweeney

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John McSweeney writes essays about Art, authoring Crime-Fiction, and Life.

Figure Paintings, 2013 — How he returned to making figure paintings
Painting the Movers — How he was talked into painting 47 figures, 13 trucks and 2 dogs
Figure Paintings, 2014-2016 — How he utilised a new studio to paint larger pictures
Neptune Paintings — How he reworked an ancient Roman myth
West End Ware — How he fused Munch’s The Scream with retail therapy and Ancient Greek art
Yet Another Spectacle — How he responded to Guy Debord and car crash photography
Happy Hour — How a chance encounter with his son completed the picture
Stencils — How he learned from Larry Wall and developed a love for Reusable Painting Objects
Influences — How he fell under the spell of Turner, Rembrandt and Velázquez
Producing Digital Prints — How he came to make Giclée and C-Type photographic prints.
The Grenfell Tower Fire — How a tragedy affected his work.
A Very English Summer — How thirteen paintings became one
Life and Art — How life’s experiences determine the nature of art

Crime Writing — How he began adding to slush-piles
The Three-Towered Castle — How he came to write it
A Short History of Ireland — How the English and the Irish contributed to a bloody history
The Butcher of Cairo — How Marilyn Stasio, and the ghost of Hemingway, showed him another way to write fiction

Looking for a Ghost — How he searched for his grandfather, Frank Cave
Covent Garden Market — How his father crafted the fine art of ducking and diving
Alfred Hitchcock — How Hitch hoodwinked market porters when directing Frenzy
Richard Harris — How the actor demonstrated a fondness for a fight
A Memoir of a Kleptomaniac — How his father was driven by an impulse control disorder
Sid and Nancy — How Nancy Spungen predicted her demise at the hands of Sid Vicious