As a painter, printmaker, filmmaker, musician and writer, John Lackey has spent most of his life highlighting what he’s most passionate about—through art. Whether he’s painting a national or regional landscape, creating murals showcasing his hometown of Lexington, or designing posters for his favorite band, Lackey uses his creativity to share what he loves with others.
“It’s always really exciting to connect your life to what you’re into through your art,” he says.
Mark Zerof
For nearly two decades, Lackey has made his living as a painter of slightly surreal landscapes. His paintings have been shown in venues such as Lexington’s Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center, and he recently had a piece on display at the University of Kentucky Art Museum. It was part of an exhibit on view October 2020-February 2021 called This Is America that took a look at the country’s history and the current state of affairs.
“The exhibit was a commentary on America,” Lackey explains. “There was flag waving, but there was also an original portrait of George Washington next to a portrait of George Floyd. And I had a painting in there of a young couple taking a selfie on a distant ridge at the Grand Canyon.”
Stuart Horodner, director of the University of Kentucky Art Museum, curated the exhibit. He was looking for something that might capture a bit of the spirit of the American landscape, and Lackey’s painting fit perfectly.
“John has a kind of approach you might call magic realism. Some of his paintings have kind of a hallucinatory, psychological or spiritual … it’s a realism tempered by a way of trying to capture the energy of what he’s painting, not just the look of what he’s painting.”
Horodner says he is struck by Lackey’s interest in landscape—Kentucky landscape in particular—and the way Lackey portrays it. “For me, one of the great models for this would be when Van Gogh paints trees or something that seems so everyday common,” he says. “How do you paint the field? How do you paint the plowed field? When you see Van Gogh paint or you see Charles Burchfield paint or Marsden Hartley paint, it’s the approach—it’s the abstractions, almost; it’s the rhythms; it’s an animation aspect.”
Like those artists, Lackey has found a way to paint something ordinary and share how it makes him feel.
“I think what John has done is figure out a way to express through this animation—this kind of style and spirit of how he paints—the kind of feelings he has about the landscape,” Horodner says.
Celeste Lewis, director of the Downtown Arts Center, has known Lackey for more than a decade and during that time has seen him evolve on an even deeper level as an artist.
“It’s been a joy to watch because he’s added more layers, depth and emotion, and you ‘see’ John Lackey in his paintings,” she says. “He has such a deep respect for nature and the earth, and he puts that into his work. You feel it; you feel the energy coming up through the plants and the dirt.”
Lackey attributes much of his unique style as a painter to the many years he spent as a printmaker.
“People say they see this or that in my paintings,” he explains, “but a lot of what they’re seeing is my having been a printmaker: carving wood engravings on linoleum block prints for 20 years before I ever started painting. I studied printmaking, but I’m a self-taught painter.”
Although Lackey didn’t begin painting until later in life, he has always been interested in doodling and drawing. He remembers getting his first set of markers at a young age and drawing his cat, his turtle and The Beatles.
“Then, when I was 14 and I got bored while staying with my grandmother one summer, she told me to draw this lady in a magazine and gave me a pencil and typing paper,” he says. “It was a model with heavy makeup and lots of cheekbone shadow, and that’s when I first started drawing with shading. I realized it was all just math. I could figure it out, and I liked doing it.”
After high school, Lackey went to the University of Kentucky to study art. He ended up flunking out—more than once.
“One of the times I flunked out, I just started drifting around,” he says. “The Grateful Dead were touring as Bob Dylan’s back-up band, and I loved Dylan and was getting into The Dead, so I followed them around. I got skinny and hungry enough and saw people making crafty artwork in parking lots. So, I borrowed ink and paper and started making handmade tape covers, then got into drawing and printmaking and screen-printing T-shirts of my original designs.”
He met his wife at a Grateful Dead show and later returned to Lexington, where he went back to the University of Kentucky, this time to study printmaking and graphic design.
In the years that followed, he worked as a printmaker, a graphic artist at a local TV station, and an art director at another, and created countless logos, book covers, T-shirts, posters and more.
Mark Zerof
“I did posters for the Terrapin Hill Music Festival and all of the Holler Poets Series,” he says. “My favorite band is Wilco, and I’ve been able to do posters for them and hang out backstage and talk to them a little bit. That’s been really exciting.”
When he was 40, Lackey made a decision to focus on painting full time. He dedicated himself to learning the craft and has since become one of Lexington’s most well-respected painters. He paints with acrylics, using glazes to give his work a shinier, more transparent look.
Lackey opened his Homegrown Press Studio & Gallery to show and sell his paintings but also to allow people to come in and watch an artist at work. It was a popular concept, and Lackey especially enjoyed talking to fellow creatives and young people with an interest in art.
“John is very much a cheerleader for other artists,” Lewis says, “and really wants to support and help them. When he comes and does shows, he always offers encouragement to others, and if someone says anything like, ‘I’m having a hard time with something,’ he’s the first one to sort of squat down and say, ‘OK, let’s talk about it.’ ”
Mark Zerof
Lackey was forced to close his studio in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, he works out of his home in a studio he designed that reflects his many talents and interests.
“I’ve got my big carving/drafting table and my printmaking press, a fold-down table for inking, and I’ve got a bunch of guitars, amps, and a bass,” he says. “I also have sculpture and art by friends, and one wall’s covered with posters from things I’ve been involved with and tons of stuff from writers and activists.”
One of his newest paintings features a mermaid and touches on his concerns about the environment.
“It has a mermaid under the ocean amongst dead coral and a bunch of different characters,” Lackey says. “And she’s trying to drag the fishermen down to see what they’ve done to the ocean.”
The environment and other challenges facing the world today have occupied a lot of Lackey’s time in recent months, and he began expressing some of his thoughts through poetry.
“Everybody seems to be having a real hard time figuring out what’s going on, even people who mean well and are pretty intelligent,” he says. “So, I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything I can contribute to that with my writing.”
With encouragement from other writers, he’s decided to publish his poetry and use his mermaid painting for the cover. And now, he’s taking that idea a step further with plans to use his book to launch his next creative endeavor—his Homegrown Press publishing company.
Lackey hopes his poetry, along with books he plans to publish by other authors, can help draw attention to current challenges but also offer hope and inspiration, and bring people together. It’s a continuation of what he’s always done—blend life and art together.
“When all is said and done, I would prefer that everything we publish would have more than a modicum of heart, relevance, originality and creativity,” he says. “And really cool covers!”