By John Tweddle
My name is John Tweddle. I am called an artist. Tweddle rhymes with metal or peddle, in case you give a damn. Sometimes some people call me Kentucky John.
I was born in Pinckneyville, KY back in 1938. That’s what they tell me, anyhow, I don’t remember. I do remember being real small and giant people holding me in their big sweaty arms. These big folks were always annoying me, trying to make me do stuff that I didn’t want to do. I remember a big fat “aunt” or something, squeezing me against her fat tits and choking me with her horrible “perfume”.
In 1956 or ’57, when I saw paintings by Pollack and DeKooning, I thought wow!! This is damn cool.
I am trying to create this bloody website so you will think I am a great artist and buy my crazy pictures and sculptures and mixes of whatever art objects and what not, and then I will finally be rich and famous before I croak. Ha ha ho, of course I do not ever want to die. What a bore dead people are.
Talking to the dead is worse than talking to yourself — or talking to “god”. “Art” is a ritual attempt to become one with the infinite.
Well, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a truck driver like my dad. I dropped out of high school and tried driving a truck for my dad when I was 16. At first it was real fun. Open road! Yeah man, music on the radio, pie and coffee at truck stops, flirting with the waitress, no more boring school. But after a while it started being lonely and monotonous and I was ready to finish school.
But then, “ART SCHOOL”. What a drag that turned out to be. I would only recommend the “Kansas City Art Institute” to my worst enemy. Of course, the “Atlanta School of Art” is also a crock of shit. Forgive me, all the nice people who work at these stumbling institutions of “higher learning,” for I have sinned and have no faith in thee! But I had fun there because I just saw it as my big studio with a bunch of people in my way and these idiots pretending to be “teachers” annoying me all too often. I realize now of course that I was sort of self-absorbed hubristic and egotistical. But that’s just the way it was and I wanted to win. I suppose that I thought “ART SCHOOL” was going to be some great lofty realm but I was deflated to see that it wasn’t very different from high school, so I just bulldozed ahead with my blinders on.
I wasn’t crazy when I started being an “artist,” but I became rather nutty after a while pursuing this dream. Of course, being married to a lying cheating wife sure didn’t help none.
If you were to start your own collection of works by living artists, who would you include?
“I like the odd ones out, the exceptions to the rule, mainly artists’ artists. They just do what they want to do and have been doing it their whole lives long. There is a show in Maastricht now called ‘Exile on Main Street’ (Bonnefanten Museum) with these kind of artists: Artschwager, Copley, Gianakos, Peter Saul, John Tweddle, H.C. Westermann and others. Strange intriguing works, the artists are crazy. I like that. Maniacs, you know!”
— Dylan Apivor interview with Arno Verkade, head of Christie’s Amsterdam Post-War and Contemporary Art, May 20, 2009
