BIOGRAPHY

Andrew Johnstone was born in 1933 to journalist father James and opera singer mother Dorothea.  He was educated at Pinewood School and then Marlborough College, leaving at 15 after doing his Higher Cert to embark on a motorbike adventure through Europe in 1949 and 1950. His journey took him to the University of Strasbourg and the Sorbornne where he became fluent in French and German. 

He joined the Scots Guards for two years for his National Service. He served in Egypt’s Canal Zone and then learnt Arabic in the copper bazaars of Baghdad.  Johnstone went on to read PPE at St John’s College, Oxford, where he indulged his childhood passion for painting, studying drawing at the Ruskin School of Art for two terms.

From an early age, Andrew showed a determination to walk in the opposite direction to his peers.  While most Oxford undergraduates headed to London and the debutante balls during their holidays, Andrew applied to join the French Foreign Legion. When he was refused, he applied for a visa from the Russian Embassy to walk all the way to Moscow – also refused. 

Though he joined the Foreign Office after coming down from Oxford, he was never really at home in the Establishment.   His postings in places such as Syria, Pakistan, Cambodia and Ireland were perfect for him.

First to Beirut where Johnstone studied at the famed MECAS adding fluency in Arabic to his repertoire, before continuing to the Trucial States, Oman and Damascus.  Many adventures followed including a great friendship with Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan who became the ruler of Abu Dhabi, a legendary camel trek to Liwa Oasis and the rescuing of a long-suffering slave.

At all his foreign postings Andrew Johnstone painted and drew. He had a one-man show in Rawalpindi with the British Council and exhibited at the Living Arts Exhibition in Belfast and the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. Concentrating mostly on figurative works, these exhibitions and commissions hinted at a potential second career.

In 1963 Johnstone married Diane, before being posted to Syria and then Cambodia in 1969-71.

His final posting was to Ireland and then in 1973, in his forties, Andrew took early retirement from the Foreign Office.  He moved his family to a smallholding high on a hill near Helston in Cornwall. 

He felt that the flagstoned cottage and thirteen windy acres were infinitely preferable to spending several years in London ‘finding out how Whitehall works’ as one Foreign Office mandarin put it.  Though Andrew told his wife that he now wanted to paint, he had to put all his energy into making and selling things in order to keep the wolf from the door - including fantastic automata, hand-made and painted clocks, hand-dyed rugs, plan-chests, dolls’ houses.  From his remote home on the Lizard peninsula, he crafted life-size sculptures of wooden dogs that sold in galleries around the world.

He eventually made a good business creating bespoke and often very complex frames for artist friends, which the National Gallery named the ‘finest Rococo frames of 20th century’.  In 1989 he was subject of a Channel 4 documentary called Consuming Passions by BAFTA-award winning filmmaker Jonas Grimas.

For 20 years Andrew rarely drew or painted.  But in 1993, after attending an etching class given by his great friend the artist Bryan Ingham,  Andrew was so appalled by how much he had forgotten that he began to draw and paint again, and he finally started taking his art seriously once more. In early 1994 a gallery owner visiting Andrew’s workshop to collect paintings he had framed for others saw some of his paintings and commented how they could sell. From that time on,  Andrew concentrated more and more on painting. 

He exhibited regularly at the Royal College of Art, the 2/21 British Art Fair and the Islington Art Fair,  with the Gordon Hepworth Gallery andWilson-Stephens Fine Art.   He had a few one-man shows with Gordon Hepworth in Chelsea and in Cork Street, before regularly exhibiting withCadogan Contemporary, which continues to represent him.  He had numerous solo shows at Cadogan, until his final exhibition of drawings in 2010, establishing a distinguished following of collectors. His work can be found in numerous international private collections.

Johnstone stopped painting regularly after 2006 and in the autumn of 2011 he had his first stroke.  In 2013,  Andrew and wife Diane celebrated their golden wedding anniversary and after a long well-lived life, Andrew passed away in February 2015.