John Salt

John Salt (2 August 1937 – 13 December 2021) was an English artist, whose greatly detailed paintings from the late 1960s onwards made him one of the pioneers of the photorealist school.

Although Salt's work developed through several distinct phases, it generally focussed on images of cars, often shown wrecked or abandoned within a suburban or semi-rural American landscape, with the banality and dishevelment of the subject matter contrasting with the immaculate and meticulous nature of the work's execution.

Biography

Early years and education Salt was born and brought up in the Sheldon district of Birmingham. His father was a motor repair garage owner, whose stepfather in turn had been a signwriter painting stripes on the bodies of cars. As a young boy Salt was encouraged to draw and paint, and at the age of fifteen he gained admittance to the Birmingham School of Art, where he studied from 1952 to 1958. From 1958 until 1960 he studied at the Slade School of Art in London, where he was particularly influenced by the work of the English artist Prunella Clough and American Pop Art figures such as Robert Rauschenberg. since when he has exhibited widely worldwide.

Salt's technique and style developed throughout the early seventies. Under the influence of John Clem Clarke he increasingly used an airbrush instead of a spray gun, with stencils to obtain the detail and precision he sought. His subject matter also broadened to include pick-up trucks and mobile homes, with the use of his own photography encouraging a deliberately informal snapshot-like composition.

Return to England Salt returned to England in 1978 and settled in Bucknell, Shropshire. His work in England has largely continued to feature American scenes, however. Salt explained: "I think in a way it [America] has that removed quality I quite like, and also the light is much sharper, you get incredibly clear light, much harder, it's much softer in Britain, it doesn't quite have that edge – edge in every way, in light and subject matter."

During the 1980s Salt moved away from using acrylic paints to using water-based casein, largely for health-based reasons rather than as a question of style.

Salt continued to live and paint in Shropshire until his death on 13 December 2021, at the age of 84.

Work White Chevy – Red Trailer (1975), Airbrushed acrylic on canvas. Salt's pictures generally feature wrecked cars and decrepit mobile homes in semi-rural locations in the United States. They are produced from photographs by projecting transparencies onto canvas and using an airbrush and stencils to reproduce the colour – a painstaking process that can take up to two years to complete. something he has gone some way to acknowledge:

John Salt's legacy lives on in a pub named in his honour, John Salt, in the Islington/Angel borough of London.