Big Jeff’s first solo art exhibition challenges perceptions of anxiety

If you have lived in Bristol for less than a year, it’s very possible that you might not know about Big Jeff.

So let me explain. In the days when live music could take place, it was always obvious that you were at the best gig of the night if Jeffrey ‘Big Jeff’ Johns was in the crowd.

It was impossible to miss him. He would always be down the front, his mop of blond curls bouncing up and down. Big Jeff is Bristol’s own musical barometer of taste.

“Who is Big Jeff and why doesn’t he come to my shows?” lamented Beans on Toast in a song.

So who is Big Jeff? Well, he was born in 1982 in Milton Keynes, moved to a village near Stroud in Gloucestershire when he was five, now lives in Totterdown and estimates that he has been to more than 4,000 gigs. There was even a petition to rename the Colston Hall after him.

Jeff is also a painter and if you went to a gig that he was at pre-Covid, you might have seen him with his sketchbook, drawing the musicians on stage while the show was going on.

Some of Jeff’s paintings are now on display in the foyer of the Bristol Beacon and while visitors are still unable to see them in person, a new website – www.bigjeffjohnsart.com – allows a virtual viewing and the opportunity to buy prints of his work.

Jeff says that he began painting “as a way of dealing with lots of difficult emotions and my struggle to deal with the world around me. It came as a natural and cathartic release.

“Art for me is about creating space for myself and using my creativity to find my voice. At times this can be intimidating.

“I use drawing and painting as a form of self reflection. A lot of my work is a reflection on my struggle around feeling like I don’t fit into this world.”

Gaelynn Lea by Big Jeff

On a recent morning, Big Jeff visited the exhibition wearing a mask with the word ‘music’ written on it that had been made by his mum.

Also made by his mum was the waistcoat that he was sporting, with dozens of wristbands from past gigs and festivals sewn onto it. (The forest of wristbands still on both wrists is now more like a copse than before.)

During this current lockdown, Jeff has moved back to his family home near Plymouth, where he finds solace going on long walks with his dog, Rosie, “like a dog DNA cement mixer” in his own words, with the six-year-old being a bit of Irish wolfhound, a bit border collie and a bit lurcher.

When I walked into the Bristol Beacon, I made a beeline for Jeff already inside the Glass Room exhibition space at the far end of the foyer, before realising that this was in fact a cardboard cut-out of the Independent Venue Week ambassador.

Big Jeff with Big Jeff in the Bristol Beacon – photo: Martin Booth

“This feels really amazing and really emotional,” the real Big Jeff told me, standing up from a chair just to the side of the bar.

Jeff said that he paints whatever he feels in the mood for, with most of the work on display here painted on the floor of his kitchen in Totterdown before he got round to buying an easel.

It was around three years ago that after attending an art group, he found himself at a Fenne Lily gig with his sketchbook and just started drawing.

One painting of an artist in the exhibition, Gaelynn Lea, came about after Jeff saw her name on the Green Man Festival lineup and realised that he did not know who she was. He then listened to her music which resulted in him painting the piece based on a press shot.

Build by Big Jeff

The exhibition’s title, Welcome to My World, has been carefully chosen, with an initial collection of 34 paintings being released in three phases.

Bristol Beacon artistic director, Todd Wills, said that he was “extremely proud” to be able to work with Jeff to exhibit his art for the first time, both online and in situ.

“Whilst many of us feel we know Jeff after seeing him at countless shows over the years, this feels like an opportunity to get to understand another side of him through his art and what’s being expressed within it.”

Looking around at his paintings hanging on the walls, Jeff added: “People know me for one side of who I am. They don’t necessarily know me for the other side of my world.”

Main photo: Martin Booth

Read more: Breakfast With Bristol24/7: Big Jeff