The Stones Roses’ guitarist paints the town.

see image gallery

Forget the acid house smiley face, the hippest image for chests and walls in late-80s Manchester - or Madchester as its homegrown “baggy” scene called it - was the Jackson Pollock-esque paint splashes of The Stone Roses’ record sleeves. The culprit was the band’s softly spoken lead guitarist, John Squire.

“I’m embarrassed about the Pollock thing,” Squire admits today. “I would have liked to use the originals but that wasn’t possible, so I made copies. It was liberating to get away from my limited formal education of drawing objects like shoes and mushrooms with a pencil.”

Ten years after The Roses’ split, a second solo album, Marshall’s House, is fresh on the shelves and Squire has returned to the drawing board. He’s chosen the ICA, site of a legendary early Roses gig, as the venue for his first ever solo show. Squire claims he’s been too busy painting to be nervous. “It’s a new frontier. I think it will be like going on stage - terrifying initially, then extremely rewarding.”

Edward Hopper fans may have noticed that Squire named his new record after a painting by the American realist. Inspired by a calendar he was given as a Christmas present, each of the 12 tracks have Hopper titles. “The more I looked at his paintings, the more interested I became in what the people in them were thinking and what kinds of lives they had,” he reasons.

The ICA exhibition, then, is more than a collection of old paint-spattered toasters, record sleeves and sheep skulls collected from the grounds of his Chester farm. Squire describes his new work as graphic, flat and primitive. “The one I’m most excited about is the ingredients for HP sauce on a two-by-three-metre canvas and a white line painting of a nude.” Luckily for you he’s planning further shows in Manchester, Glasgow and Tokyo. Watch this space. Anna Chapman 13 February 04

John Squire - Marshall’s House, released 16 February 04 on North Country Records.

John Squire Artworks 1988-2004 is at London’s ICA, 14-16 February 04.