DRAWINGS OF MAN-MADE FORMS

We can see John’s immense curiosity about how the world works in all his drawings. This selection of his drawings of things that are recognisably man-made show how he always wanted to look beyond the superficial apprehension of a scene, to the causes of why and how things have come to have that appearance. His method was to look with the understanding that came from thinking from the maker’s point of view, so if he drew a Cambridgeshire windmill, he would have gone inside (if it was possible), talked with a local person who knew how it worked, and looked carefully at the structural oak beams and train of wooden cogwheels transmitting the wind’s force, to understand its particular logic and hence its appearance.