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Jo Brocklehurst

I don’t analyse my reasons for painting my subjects.

I just feel instinctively that I want to paint a particular person, it is a compulsion.

Jo (Josephine) Blanche Brocklehurst (1935 - 2006) was a powerful and uncompromising draughtsperson. For more than 40 years she drew people living and working at the fringes of mainstream society - punks, fetishists, actors, dancers and club-goers.

Beginning her career as a fashion illustrator, Brocklehurst later dedicated her life to creating monumental portraits in pastel, metallic inks and ultraviolet paints. She drew directly from models at her studio in West Hampstead, and in the nightclubs and theatres of London, New York and Berlin.

Brocklehurst’s work is a unique record of the alternative subcultures that went on to shape the fashion and performance scenes of the late 20th century. At the same time, her commanding pictures reveal a personal fascination with the creative and deviant tendencies of human nature.

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