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A video on the making of Crate, a 2021 45 x 45-inch painting

A note on my painting, Chambers, by John Hall

John Hall: a Painter of Modern life. Liz Wylie

"These paintings of doughnuts and Liquorice Allsorts and other candies continue the artist’s ongoing interest in popular culture and in the conventions of contemporary and pre-modernist realist painting..." Introduction to 2011 Loch Gallery exhibition.

"Rampant consumerism and materialism occupy the heart of these paintings that ultimately reflect the values of a particular time and place." George Harris, curator, Two Rivers Art Gallery

“I am neither a painter nor an art critic. As a layman, I can only report that, when I first laid eyes on Hall’s work, I immediately realized: “Now here’s an artist!” Ken McGoogan

“I believe an argument can be made... for assigning meaning to ordinary and usually overlooked aspects of daily life.” John Hall

“Active surface notation, usually used in the service of emotional expression or decoration, and pictorial distortion, also used for the same reasons, are the qualities my paintings avoid.” John Hall

“The repetition of shapes, colours and textures in complex patterns occasionally results in seemingly absurd groupings of unrelated objects.” John Hall

"In just such a sense is Hall the maker of an epic, ongoing autobiography of taste and (subsequent) meaning." Gary Michael Dault

"In such marvellous works as Long Island Sunset (1979)—a key work in the history of modern Canadian painting — Hall pressed his formal and cultural preoccupations to the limit, while wholly engaging the frustration and rage, hope and alienation of being John Hall in New York." John Bentley Mays

Artists’ works trail out behind them like a wake from a boat. Often while artists are in the midst of working, their destination remains invisible. Only years later, with perspective, does clarity emerge for both the person who made the work, and the artists’ audience. This text is my look into the persistence of Mexico on the studio practice and inspiration of Canadian artist John Hall. The story of this is bookended, beginning with four friends – two artist couples – John and Joice Hall and my husband Derek Besant and me – and ending with John Hall leaving Mexico to live and work in Kelowna, BC. Alexandra Haeseker

Trompe l'oeil and John Hall's Framed series. John Hall