JOHN ROBINSON 4/5/1935 - 6/4/2007

Artist and Co-Founder of the Bradshaw Foundation

John Robinson was born in London in 1935. At the age of 17 he joined the Merchant Navy, and on reaching Australia he jumped ship to explore this vast continent. From jackerooing and cattle droving, he went on to buy a block of virgin scrub land in the 1950’s in the Ninety Mile Desert of South Australia where he and his wife, Margie, developed a sheep farm.

In the 1960’s, at the age of 35, John returned to England with his family to begin a career as a sculptor, a hobby he had developed in the sheering barn towards the end of his farming career.

		His figurative bronzes range from the ‘monumental’ athletic sculptures to the exquisite and playful ‘life size’ children sculptures. Working from his studio in Devon, and then later in Somerset, John created ‘The Acrobats’, a 5 metre tall bronze cast of which is on permanent display outside the Sports Academy in Canberra, Australia. The Academy also have on permanent display the heroic-sized ‘Soccer Players’ and ‘Pole Vaulter’. In 1986 the heroic-sized ‘Hammer Thrower’ was commissioned for the United States Sports Academy in Alabama, USA, and a limited edition gold-plated maquette of this sculpture is now awarded annually for fields of excellence and achievement. In 1988 John was nominated the official Sculptor for the British Olympic Committee. In 1992 his sculpture ‘The Gymnast’ was selected for the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. John’s figurative sculptures of children, based on commissions, have appeared in galleries and private and public collections around the world, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1982. He has carried out commissioned portraits of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Her Majesty the Queen Mother, and President Ronald Reagan.
The Acrobats Canberra, Australia

It was in the 1970s that John developed his work to encompass symbolism. These abstract sculptures, termed ‘The Universe Series of Symbolic Sculpture’, trace a path from the beginning of time to the present day. The whole collection, comprising over one hundred works in bronze, wood, stainless steel, marble and tapestry, symbolically portrays elements of life, as visual interpretations of the artist's feelings, with each sculpture inspired by and created in an organic form found in nature, such as the spiral, ovoid, circle and cone.

The ‘Universe Series’ has been exhibited around the world. The collection was first shown in 1989 at Leeds University, followed by the University of Wales at Bangor, Liverpool in the Anglican Cathedral, Wadham College in Oxford, Churchill College in Cambridge, Barcellona and Zaragoza in Spain, and All Hallows by the Tower in London. There are permanent collections in Hampshire, England, and Aspen, USA.

In 1992 John was made an Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales, in recognition of his work combining Mathematics and Art. John’s adventures in life were always accompanied by his passion for the knowledge and truth about mankind's artistic development and creativity. This passion was the driving force behind the establishment and development of the Bradshaw Foundation. The sequence of events and the notable individuals involved – Robert Hefner III and Damon de Laszlo, to name but two – is a fascinating story, which can be followed in his published autobiography ‘From the Beginning Onwards’ and online at www.johnrobinson.com.
		John views the cave paintings of Chauvet in France

After a lifetime of interest in Art, Archaeology and Anthropology, John was a co-founder of the Bradshaw Foundation which was formed in 1992 following a further expedition to the Kimberleys. This was followed by the Bradshaw Foundation's first publication 'Bradshaws - Rock Paintings of north western Australia' edited by John in 1993. He foresaw the importance of the emerging World Wide Web, and in 1997 the Bradshaw Foundation website was established covering rock art from around the world. In 2004 the website further expanded as John introduced the genetic work of Professor Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University, in order to give rock art an anthropological context. This resulted in the 'Journey of Mankind - Genetic Map'. It was at this point the Bradshaw Foundation received a web award from Scientific American for work in the field of Anthropology & Paleontology. In 2006 John, Damon de Laszlo and Professor John Miller concieved the idea of fact-based documentary films for the internet, which resulted in the iLectures series.


Extracts of Tributes:

Damon de Laszlo
Chairman of the Bradshaw Foundation & Patron of the artist

John’s end was as in life, he always focussed on where he wanted to be and who he wanted to be with.  He left us all on Good Friday surrounded by Margie, Tim, Pete and Mark in his own home on a sunny day.

		His life, which revolved around his wife and children and those lucky enough to be included as his friends, was extraordinary.  A Renaissance man in the true sense of the word.  Fascinated by humanity, science and, of course, his peculiar gift in the Arts.  The warm bubble of affection with which he embraced us will live on in his sculptures, each of which tells a story and embraces part of the man. Time spent with John was joyous and fascinating and his epicurean philosophy of always looking for the best and most satisfying outcome in all pursuits was a great lesson in how to enjoy life to the full.
John Robinson with Damon de Laszlo in the Brancusi Garden

Sitting beside his bed in hospital just after he had been given the final prognostication was extraordinary.  The news was final, after several days of deteriorating reports and he was for a moment depressed, but gradually came round to implementing the plans he had already thought through for an ideal end – which he achieved.  Over the next too-few weeks, he re-ordered his life.

I had a wonderful lunch with him in his study on the 26th March, a privilege shared with Robert who lunched with him a week later, and heard of his contentment with his life, his family, his works and his friends, and we parted for the last time.

Seated beside his bed on the 5th April, I was to spend my last few moments with a man who had taught himself and given us a guide on how to lead a full life.

He will now always be with us in spirit and through his sculptures but the loss of his friendship will be the most difficult thing to bear.

We are all so lucky to have been able to savour part of John and to share his memory.

Robert Hefner III
President of the Bradshaw Foundation & Patron of the artist

John and I celebrated our friendship with a delightful lunch in his office, prepared by Margie, on Wednesday, April 4, a beautiful spring day.  When I looked past John out the window over his desk, the bees were popping in and out of the flowers and the birds were singing.

		Our conversation was wide ranging, covering our lives together and our shared creativity and exploration, and his admonishment to me to stay healthy so I could go on to our lives next stage, “our responsibility to the human race”, as he put it.  John spoke of “no regrets” and the satisfaction he had had with his vast creativity that was sadly, “no longer within him”.  He told me he wished no services and his ashes to be sprinkled in the stream near the “big oak tree”, so there will always be an audible remembrance.  So John!  We will each hold John’s image each time we hear moving water – mine is his recording the sound of water from a little stream in the Kimberly.  John was peaceful and in full control, which was so important to him.  I thanked him for our day together to say goodbye.
Robert Hefner III and John Robinson, Kimberley, North West, Australia

I knew it was our last living encounter, as did he, saying, “We won’t see each other again.”, as I gave him a big hug and kiss and sadly walked away to the garden to once again soak in his creativity on that beautiful day.

There are no adequate words to express the magnitude of our loss of John’s physical presence, but we will each fill the hole with living memories of his unique being and the manifestation of his creativity. MeiLi and I will continue to treasure his sculptures at Ramiiilaj, and will, as Damon said, “Go around and talk to our sculptures.”  You are all welcome for pilgrimages. 

We will all go on celebrating John for the rest of our lives.

Ronald Brown
Professor of Mathematics, University of Wales, Bangor,
 
My contact with John was from a series of fortunate coincidences, with a narrow window for the contact. But when I first ventured into the Freeland Gallery in June 1985 and was gobsmacked by the the sculptured children playing happily among the bold and beautifully crafted mathematical shapes, I thought that the mathematical community ought to know about these works.
 
Progess was desultory until John and I agreed to arrange an exhibition for the Pop Maths RoadShow in Leeds 1989, and John invited me down to Agecroft in April, 1989. To both our amazement (as John and Margie had not previously met a mathematician, dreadful thought!) we all clicked. All our subsequent work showed John's, creativity, force and practicality, able to suggest ideas such as writing `Conversations with John Robinson', which would not have occurred to me but which I was very happy to pursue. By June 1989 John had produced a colour catalogue from my draft! This was an opener for other opportunities, such as Liverpool Cathedral.
 

John had insight into complex geometric ideas. Starting with the Mobius Band as as a line twisting round a circle, he envisaged a series of sculptures exploring other shapes twisting round a circle. I have shown the pictures of the making of Eternity to mathematicians, and they are amazed that this idea, what topologists call a `Fibre Bundle', is realised in such a practical way.   We found that John was able to take some of my ideas and form them into something amazing: the exhibitions, catalogue, the web sites, in each case he took up the idea and made it practical, real, creative and beautiful. One amazing example is the sculpture Journey derived from the visit of Bernard Morin. He and Margie were a very good and supportive friends, steering me away sometimes from awkward situations! His kindness and generosity will be sorely missed.
		Professor Ronnie Brown and John Robinson with the Symbolic Sculpture 'Immortality'

I will continue to do anything that comes my way to support his humanistic vision of the marriage of art and the symbols of life truth.
 
His two sculptures Mortality and Immortality do symbolise something for all of us. The first is `from nothing to nothing, cut from an egg, the symbol of the cycle of life'. The second is `Passing on the torch of life'.

Dr Jean Clottes
Director of Prehistoric Antiquities for Midi-Pyrénées,
General Inspector for Archaeology at the French Ministry of Culture,
Scientific Advisor at the French Ministry for prehistoric rock art,
Consultant for UNESCO and the International Council on Monuments and Sites. 

John had shown me photos of his works. I had the opportunity to see some of them in England and I was amazed at his talent and at the scope of his work. He was a great artist. No wonder his artistic sensitivity had led him to rock art! When I took him to some of the best Paleolithic caves, like Chauvet or Niaux, I could tell he was feeling deep empathy with the artists of ancient times. This is why when I set up the Chauvet scientific team I asked him to be part of it, as an artist, because we needed his outlook, different from ours. The last cave he visited, with his usual sense of wonder, was the Réseau Clastres in July 2006.

Finally, when the time came he faced death with dignity and serenity. He told me he had received his Marching Orders and it was not really that difficult. It is a lesson to all of us. 

John P. Miller, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Computational Biology
Professor, Dept. of Cell Biology and Neuroscience
Montana State University      

Over the last few weeks, I have been thinking back about all of my interactions with John, including our visits together and the deep winding river of our correspondence over the last decade. I have become acutely aware of how astonishingly unique John was. Yet when I first tried to pin down the nature and essence of his uniqueness, I was at a total loss. I could come up with an impressive list of his achievements, grounded in his immense brilliance and natural insight as an artist, extended by the “renaissance-man” breadth of his interests and astounding depth of his knowledge, projected by his gift of articulation and exceptional productivity, and accentuated by the long list of remarkable people, from all spheres of life, to whom he provided inspiration and creative stimulation.
		John Miller and John Robinson Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park

Yet this list of his attributes and achievements did not in any sense capture John’s essential nature: it was not what he did in his life, but the way he lived that seemed to have made him totally and, seemingly, indescribably unique.

Though my wife Sally met John and his wonderful family only recently, she offered me the insight to John’s essential uniqueness: she characterized John as being absolutely uncompromising in the way he lived, in the purest and most positive sense of the term. Uncompromising with himself, and uncompromising in the manner through which he interacted with others. That “manner” was characterized by an insistence on honesty, integrity, and respect, and was balanced with a rare depth of awareness and consideration for others’ feelings and interests, as well as a strong dose of disarming humor. It was this strength of character, this gift of empathy, and this lack of any self-indulgence that made John totally unique in my experience. 

Michael Ball

During a lifetime, even a long lifetime, one is extremely fortunate to meet even a handful of truly exceptional people. And to meet such a rare person who also becomes a friend is one of life’s highest heights. I first met John and Margie at lunch at the Manor House, West Coker over 25 years ago. I clearly remember John’s engaging habit of talking excitedly about many subjects yet he always seemed to round off his observations with a thought-provoking comment about art, particularly sculpture. I became so fascinated that I accepted his invitation to follow him back to Agecroft to see some of his work.
		Michael Ball

Thus began a friendship I will never forget, a friendship which always included Margie who was so clearly his soulmate and lifetime partner. Together we had countless meals in London, at Agecroft, in Sydney, at Comfort Hill, my Australian farm and in Italy, particularly at Pietrasanta near Carrara where so many of John’s works were cast or carved. Our meals were always accompanied by feasts of ideas and plans for new projects.

Although I have visited the Kimberleys several times, my greatest regret is that I was unable to accompany John and Damon and Robert to this remarkable region and to see the Bradshaws for the first time with them. John’s enthusiasm coupled with his remarkable observations made travel with him an unforgettable experience.

My first purchases from John were a series of bronze maquettes which I still treasure to this day. I also purchased a marble copy of the Chini Danaide one and a half times life size which dominates my view out of my window as I write. This was carved in Pietrasanta in 1987. I then purchased a full-sized Bonds of Friendship in bronze and a full-sized Flying Horse which skims across a fish pond in my garden.

But the biggest project on which I briefed John was the sculpting, in bronze, of life-sized studies of my four sons and of my horse. We spent many hours discussing appropriate poses for each son and these poses still ring true even 20 years later. My eldest son Ben we thought should be shown reading a book under a tree. Today Ben is Publisher of Penguin Books in Australia. My second son Josh we set beside my horse and wearing an Australian hat. The sculpture so represents Josh today. Tim was climbing a tree and Nick was chasing our dog Charlie. All my sons have gone on to live their lives with their partners and friends but each of them is vividly and vitally with me thanks to John’s genius.

John’s death was so sudden it is hard to believe that there will be no more phone calls, no more letters or emails and no more big ideas and adventures. But he left as he would have wanted – with a minimum of fuss, with his family at his side and leaving behind a vast volume of work and a set of footprints the size of which I will never see again. 

Professor Stephen Oppenheimer
Green College, Oxford University

I count myself lucky that I knew John Robinson for nearly ten years, although I wish it had been longer. Our first contact was the result of him reading something I had written, and driving up to Oxford to discuss it further. John was one of those rare people in my experience, who could cut across different philosophies and disciplines to focus on the connected and over-arching picture. In my interactions and discussions with him the three particular disciplines were art, archaeology and anthropology, with an added dose of genetics. He knew art was an essential, rather than incidental component of human evolution and had the vision of creating an interactive on-line presentation using Palaeo-anthropology, archaeology and ancient rock art to portray this relationship descriptively, with the best possible graphics and accessibility. He saw this vision through to its present splendid version on the Bradshaw website – not a final version, of course, since by design the site is constantly evolving.
		Stephen Oppenheimer

With his multiple talents, personal glory did not seem to be the goal of his tremendous energy. He fully appreciated his own gifts and achievements and his good fortune in friends and family; but he was not a vain man. Maybe it was the completion of the vision that he looked for. He often said, self-deprecatingly, that he saw himself more as a facilitator, who introduced people to each other and encouraged them to network. This was a modest claim, which hid his great contributions; but I certainly benefited from his networking and met many fascinating and original people on the way with the Bradshaw Foundation. These included a number of people who have also been strongly influenced by John’s bright light. John and I had a very good conversation shortly before he died and I had the chance to thank him for all his help and influence.

While his output of figurative and non-figurative art must be his most important legacy, his other contributions are extremely impressive, for instance all his achievements with the Bradshaw Foundation. I also think that his completed autobiography is in a class of its own. Although its main readers will be his friends, family and descendants, it gives a broader and much more complete recollection of his varied and extraordinary life and achievements than the collective memory of his family and friends.  

Robert W. Rydell
Professor of History, Montana State University

John Miller told me about John Robinson's passing. I am so very sad. I know what a close friend he was.  He left us with a small model of his ‘Consilience’ sculpture - it was one that I showed to Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson when he visited this last fall. Ed thought this was the most perfect visual expression of consilience between the arts, sciences, and humanities that he had ever seen. Indeed, I thought it perfectly represented what we are trying to do with our Humanities Institute.  I have read John's autobigraphy and will remember him through his words and stories; I will certainly remember the wonderful conversations we had during his visit to Bozeman.  But his visual articulation of knowledge systems in motion is a vision that will always stay with me - and I suspect with everyone who had the good fortune to have known him over the years.
		'Consilience' by John Robinson