J.P Trevor, artist, artist in hollywood, artist in exeter

BIOGRAPHY

JP Trevor is recognized as one of most imaginative and gifted artists in the industry. He started painting around age ten and later trained in special effects and matte painting under his mentor Harrison Ellenshaw at Walt Disney productions, where he did mattes for STAR WARS.

Major collectors of his beautiful and powerful art include John Hancock III; Lewis Gilbert: film director of 007 MOONRAKER; John Howard Davies, producer: MONTY PYTHON; and The Honourable Idar Rimstead, former US Ambassador to the United Nations.

JP has produced major PR / advertising sets for prototype production cars in Detroit, and has received many awards for fine art & design which include the coveted Lurzer Archiv & CCA awards (1992-93) for television commercials.

In 1992 he was asked to design ‘master’ scenes of Gotham City for the film BATMAN. Christies auctioned one of his conceptual oil paintings of Gotham City in 2002. In 1997 he was sent to Bosnia by WARCHILD to design an exhibition for Pavarotti’s £2 million Music Centre in Mostar, which was built to give new hope for the survivors.

In 1998 he was flown to Moscow to design a major rock musical for Russia’s leading star, LAIMA VAIKULE. The show, held next to the Kremlin, was dubbed ‘Best Concert Design by a Foreign Designer’ by Russian press.

In 2005 JP completed a fifteen by ten foot art-deco oil painting. ‘BERECINGUM – DECCANHAAM’ was commissioned by the local governing body to represent the history of Barking and Dagenham. A digital reproduction was unveiled by the Mayor. It was hailed as a “major triumph’, and is now permanently housed in the Town Hall.

JP has forged his reputation by constantly exploring his imagination, and by staying with the master techniques. Everything is done by hand and LEVIATHAN, his most recent epic thirty-foot work is a stunning example.

SHE CRIED SO I PAINTED MORE, by JP

I was born in London, and lived in France where I went to school. But I had to leave because my parents were poor so I started painting around ten.

JP stands for Jean-Pierre, which I adopted. My nickname’s ‘Phoenix’ and in 1988 I came back to London with just my clothes and started again. I designed a major Russian rock musical on the floor of a bed-sit. And I did a canvas background for British Airways in a derelict London warehouse with one light bulb.

I never wanted to be classified as an ‘artist’, I probably never wanted to be one at all, although this is how I’ve always made a living. My mother cried when I did my first ten-foot painting when I was sixteen and so I figured she’d love me more if I painted more.

In 1996 WARCHILD flew me to Bosnia to design an expo for Pavarotti’s music centre. When my bed starting moving across the floor I was so happy when I found out it wasn’t the Croats who’d started firing again on us in Mostar but only a small earthquake. Art can take you into interesting situations. I’ve a habit of saying yes to any project, then sorting out how to do it. Sometimes I do small, five feet is small. They’d send me to a mental facility again if I had to do miniatures. Although on a cosy winter evening that sounds quite nice, with a pot of tea next to me and a paint brush with one hair.

Sometimes art takes you to technical extremes. My thirty foot LEVIATHAN painting was a very physical piece, and when Stephen Fry had his photo taken with me in front of it, I could see I’d lost weight and looked like a homeless bum, all rags and paint. Even sewing on a button that had fallen off my trousers would break the one hundred and ten day focus, so I had only one button left.

Painting can be about something unseen. Bruce Boa the actor in Faulty Towers was very ill but he came to see me every day working on LEVIATHAN in 2004. He said watching the city grow made him want to go on living. He died not long after it was completed. He brought flowers to the unveiling but had to leave because he was too ill to stand.  I’ve had people say they bought a painting in the hope it would heal someone close. People cry sometimes. A man bought a painting on a payment plan and came every month to the gallery where they pulled out a chair for him. He’d sit there for half an hour in silence looking at the painting then go home. But I don’t love art. I do battle with it.

I’d like to see my work used in ways that move. You could have a sanctuary where people can go to unwind and find some stillness, and the entire room, including ceiling, could be this glowing thing of absolute beauty, also brilliant for children’s areas. I did a mural for a friend’s baby and when they put him in the room he calmed down and stopped crying. Art needs to spread in unusual ways.