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JOHN C. WEIBULL

Art was my first language!

 

THE BEGINNING

John C. Weibull is three years old. He was born in Marbella, Spain, into a Swedish-Brazilian family with an artistic heritage. Perhaps that is why colour and creativity found a natural place in his world from an early age. But no one knew where it would lead.

 

A DIFFERENT KIND OF DISCOVERY

When John was five months old, he was given a drawing tablet. His parents wanted to give him something to explore – something beyond the screen that so easily becomes a child’s everyday form of entertainment.

He began to create. First, small marks. Then more.

His mother, Rubia Caldeira, who is an artist herself, began photographing and filming what he was doing. As his interest continued to grow, John was given paint, brushes and canvas.

What had begun simply as an opportunity to play and explore became something he returned to on his own.

He discovered painting.

 

THE PROCESS

Today, John chooses his own colours and brushes. He begins without knowing exactly how a painting will end. He experiments, changes, adds and continues.

Sometimes he works quickly; sometimes he returns to the same part of the canvas. One colour meets another. One brushstroke is covered by the next. Something disappears, while something else emerges.

This is how the paintings come into being.

 

PAINTING WITH THE WHOLE BODY

John’s canvases are often large in relation to his own body. He moves around them, stretches, changes position and allows his whole body to become part of the process.

That is why movement remains visible in the paintings. But perhaps above all, time remains visible.

Every work is documented throughout its creation – from the first colour to the moment when John himself decides that the painting is finished.

This makes it possible to see more than the finished result.

We can see the discovery.

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COLOUR AS LANGUAGE

Blue and green frequently return in John’s paintings. They meet stronger colours, contrasts and combinations that emerge during the process itself.

There is no predetermined story behind the paintings, no image that has to represent something, and no explanation that needs to exist before the colour can begin.

There is simply a canvas, the colour and the next movement.

 

BEFORE THE EXPLANATION

At ten months of age, John was recognised by Guinness World Records as the world’s youngest male artist. His first public exhibition, Breaking the Record, took place in Marbella.

It is an extraordinary beginning to an artistic journey.

But the record is not what makes the paintings interesting.

It is his age that allows us to witness something that is otherwise difficult to see: a visual language while it is still taking shape.

John has not yet had time to learn how an artist is expected to paint. He has not yet had time to gather all the images, theories and rules that, over time, influence the way we see and create.

He paints before he needs to explain why.

 

WHAT WE SEE

Perhaps that is why his work is, above all, about the most fundamental elements of painting: colour, movement, surface, rhythm, and the discovery of what happens when the next brushstroke is made.

 

TO WITNESS THE BEGINNING

We have a rare opportunity to come close to John’s artistic journey at a very early stage. That is something to be grateful for.

To see these paintings now, while his visual language is still taking shape, means that we are not simply encountering finished works. We are also given a glimpse of the beginning of an artistic journey whose direction has yet to be written.

It is rare to be able to follow an artistic practice so closely from its earliest steps.

And the interest in John’s work has already been clearly demonstrated. At his vernissage, every exhibited work was sold, with individual works selling for up to SEK 65,000.

This early interest from collectors gives the paintings a particular position already. But their significance lies not only in what they are valued at today, but also in the fact that they belong to the very first period of an artistic journey that is still unfolding.

To collect a work from this period is therefore to preserve a part of the beginning.

 

THE JOURNEY AHEAD

No one knows what John’s art will look like in five, ten or twenty years.

And that is not the point.

Because what we encounter here is not a finished artistic practice.

We encounter the beginning.

 

A little boy who was given colour and a brush – and discovered that he had something to say before he had the words to say it.

Before words, there was colour.

Before the story, there was the gesture.

Before language, there was painting.

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