The scene in the movie “Titanic” in which Rose (Kate Winslet) posed for a nude portrait was a huge inspiration for Jo King. He immediately began attending live painting sessions run by Bohuslav Barlow in Todmorden, Lancashire. Since then the human form has always been the dominant subject of King’s paintings. His favorite technique is oil on a prepared board. It uses the texture of the preparation to enhance skin tones and fabrics. He continues to draw from life, but many of his oil compositions begin as a collection of photographs and sketches that are cut out, enlarged or reduced, often colored and separated, and finally manipulated, using the principles of perspective in a mock-up of the final composition. From this collage the composition is scaled onto the painting and the painting process begins. Variations of this technique were used by many commercial artists and editors to illustrate magazines and stories between 1900 and 1980. Uninterested in the passing fads of the art world, Jo King’s influences include artists and illustrators from Andrew Wyeth, Alphonse Mucha, Egon Schiele, Guy Peellaert, Frank Frazetta, Gil Elvgren and Norman Rockwell to the Dutch Golden Age, Neo-Classical works, early photography and an abiding passion for Film Noir.

Regarding the way he creates his works, the artist says: “I try to create art that captures the viewer’s attention and then their own imagination to create the story behind what they see. If a piece of art needs an explanation to be valid as art, then that doesn’t excite me. Explanations should only exist to enhance and deepen the understanding of the viewer’s first impression.”

In September 2018 he joined the great British art community in Cornwall and his studio is now located in the village of Constantine.