A break from the stormy June weather gave artist Joe Meldrum an opportunity to set up his easel and begin his latest scene on the Barbican on a humble piece of board roughly 10x8in.
Artist ‘Just a Janner who Paints’ Joe Meldrum paints all manner of scenes across Plymouth, using his impressionist style to blur the line of the ordinary with the dreamlike broad strokes of his brush to create evocative snapshots in time.
We caught up with him mid way through his latest project, capturing a popular cobbled street on the Barbican in bright summer sunshine. The artwork builds quickly and takes shape as we talked, the scene being slowly rendered into life and his hand adding strokes of colour to the board. The main aspect of Joe’s paintings is his ability to perfectly capture the light from a scene despite the ever changing weather.
He said:
“I’ve been enjoying it, but this was quite a challenge actually. The light is constantly changing and I’ve kind of got to remember where I was up to and what stuff was looking like to varying degrees of success.
But like I say, acrylics are quite good for this because you can make mistakes, work back into it, and not worry too much about things going completely and totally wrong.”
His background in art is apparent, through his ability to quickly mix colours together and apply them to a well structured perspective. The foundations of his art come through the skeleton of the acrylic, light and shadow rendered expertly yet blurred, as if squinting at the scene. But his frustrations with art education came through the interview and the barriers he faced in education.
He said:
“I went to university to do fine art and they want to push you into a certain way of doing stuff, which is fine. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. People know what they’re talking about. But, ultimately this became something I wasn’t really enjoying. I was too caught up in that, the process of it, rather than the actual enjoying the making.”
“I’ve done the art degree and things like that in the past, but actually it was much more what you kind of consider to be, contemporary art and not much painting.”
Joe’s nature and candor during the interview matched his art: approachable, interesting yet beneath the surface lay many details that gave away his talent. Despite this he remained humble throughout and encouraged the idea of people getting into art as a hobby.
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He said:
“For anyone starting out painting I recommend stuff like acrylics. It’s a really good way to get into it and not be afraid of getting things wrong, which I think is very key to the process of painting. You are going to get stuff wrong and everything just takes a bit of practice until you can get it right.”
Joe Meldrum understands the importance of art as a hobby more than most as he spoke of his struggles with mental health and the healing nature of art which is part of his encouragement to get people into art.
“I started [painting] in earnest back in January, I have some mental health problems, and this has been a really good excuse for me to get out and do some stuff which helps the mental health, but also hopefully turns into a career as well.
It’s a big chance for me to improve the mental health and do something in the way that other people seem to enjoy as well.”
People certainly do enjoy his work, and curious passers by craned their necks and stepped out to see what Joe was painting. I apologised for pointing the camera so intrusively into his work space but he was very understanding.
He said:
“To be honest, people have been leaning in all the time so it’s nothing. I quite like it in all honesty. It’s nice that people can take an interest and have a chat and stuff like that.
I think it’s a shame that a lot of people don’t get the chance to be creative or feel like they can’t be. It’s nice to be able to come out and do stuff and show people that, yeah, you can be creative there’s no such thing as being bad at art or anything like that.”
Joe Meldrum talks about his hopes to make a career out of his art, he says people can contact him at jmeldrum.art@gmail.com to enquire about purchasing his work.
“I’m currently in the process of talking to a couple of galleries about getting works in galleries and things like that.
I’m hoping there might be more permanent places to pick up some works and things. For the meantime, I’m just really enjoy doing them and people seem to enjoy them and want to buy them, which I’m really grateful for.”
To conclude our interview he signed off to say:
“If anybody is interested in going out and doing creative stuff, by all means, drop me an email. I just encourage everyone to go out and enjoy doing creative things and reap the benefits.”
