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Squire had no formal art training unlike members of earlier bands such as The Clash or The Beatles and he claims that his education in art came from early Clash sleeves and names dropped in interviews. One of the first influences for Squire was Jackson Pollock, a favourite of Clash bassist Paul Simonon and his influence can be seen in the early Stone Roses album sleeves.
Imitation, I have been told, is the most sincere form of flattery and embracement of Pollock’s style in those early sleeves may be a bit telling of John Squire’s style. Many of his 2007 prints bear similarities with works by former YBA Gary Hume who after the success of his doors, took to drawing linear figures on monochrome canvasses. There are differences however and Squire's colours are more symbolic of the North with tones of gray and dockyard oxides. John Squire doesn’t so much copy Gary Hume as sees the potential for ideas from which Gary Hume had begun to be taken to his own place.
Inspiration struck again following Tate Modern’s exhibition of JMW Turner’s The Three Rigis in 2007. Many of the paintings Squire released in 2008 combine the foggy skies associated with Turner with his local Macclesfield landscape. This is at its best in the colours of valley floors and grassy fields in Valley Floor or The Road to Serfdom. These paintings make use of contemporary literature such as Richard Dawkins’ in Have Faith or modern political thought in The Power to Destroy Governments. Have Faith as it happens is quite distant from Turner and something of an anomaly echoing previous masters such as Dali and Van Gogh without settling on a clear inspiration.[1]
In 2009 Squire began experimenting with metal and his website boasts a video of himself actually cutting and folding the metal himself with a forklift truck to hold the metal in place while he welds. The bronze is the same tone that can be seen in sculptures by Anthony Gormley but I failed to find a video of Gormley in a welding mask. In a way it seems that the blue fire and sparks take John Squire back to the working class Manchester where he earned his stripes and the DIY Punk ethos that was going on during his teenage years. In the end though it all comes down to one question: Will The Stone Roses reform? As recently as March, Squire was on Newsnight informing a dejected Jeremy Paxman that the Roses are dead and buried. Then again, Robbie looks set to rejoin Take That.
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