In the Company of Strangers: John Sproul’s Crowded Spaces at UVU
15 BYTES MAGAZINE by Geoff Wichert, on July 20, 2025
John Sproul, “My Fair Lady,” 2024, acrylic on canvas, 18×12 in.
“I paint what I feel through what I see.” —John Sproul
“If I’m going to be isolated, I’d rather do it alone and not in a crowd.” This familiar wish of one beset by strangers comes to mind when contemplating the art of John Sproul. Consider the painting that hangs at the entrance to Crowded Spaces, his current exhibition at the UVU Museum of Art. “My Fair Lady” contains four ambiguous figures in an almost empty room—empty but for three large, rectangular objects, two of which are freestanding and one that leans against an otherwise invisible, exterior wall. These surroundings, which arguably suggest a gallery, work together to delimit the space and confine the figures, one of Sproul’s points being that being forced together by some space-shaping power that may be physical, social, even spiritual, shared by the occupants individually or together, so often coincides with the lack of connections being made between individuals who desperately desire, even need to make them.
So in “My Fair Lady,” four subjects, one in a chair and three standing, share a space but look in different directions, seemingly oblivious to each other. Something feels a bit off. These figures may well demonstrate how despite a common purpose—one suggested by their shared mood, common mode of dress, alert and contemplative postures, and chosen surroundings, even if it’s not clear what goal is shared—they are separated by something perhaps as challenging as their egos, or their opaque histories, or their conflicting identities, which keeps them isolated, possibly antagonistic, and apart.
Something also felt odd about the statement that accompanies Crowded Spaces, though it turned out to be written in plain English. Its meaning is clear. Direct. (You don’t have to spend very long in the halls of art to know that this is rarely done. Like academia, the arts require a certain challenge at their borders—gates to which the would-be entrant must have the verbal key.) I was curious about who wrote this unsigned marvel; most exhibition statements are not signed, which is part of what makes them seem so much the same—that, along with the interchangeability of their assertions and hyperbolic language, usually closer to advertising than to evaluation or explication. They’re more likely to tell the viewer how to respond than address the specifics of the art. Scramble their parts and not much difference will be made. In any event, it turned out to have been written by Sproul himself. He’s been working on how to talk about his work, and it is satisfying to finally see the result. Successful artists tend to have strong visual skills, but their verbal ones are usually neglected. Sproul shows strength in both.
John Sproul, “Subway,” 2025, acrylic on canvas, 12×14 in.
John Sproul, “Walking,” 2025, acrylic on canvas, 20×24 in.
In this and several other such statements, Sproul has tallied the subjects of his painted scenes, including “family, friends, and people encountered at the dinner table, hiking trails, concerts, museums”—and more recently, urban transportation. In other words, people he knows or has met. More importantly, actual people. So much of modern art relies on the artist’s imagination, which is a legitimate choice, even as it feels closer to entertainment. Or it uses its subjects to prove a foregone conclusion, which is also defensible, if upside-down. Yet, arguably the most useful thing an artist can offer is akin to what scientists do, which is to say they look closely at the world and then reveal what can be found there. Once upon a time, that was the artist’s foremost task, and in Crowded Spaces, as in so much of what he has done in his 30 career years and almost as many exhibitions, John Sproul undertakes to join their reputable community.
Of course it’s one thing to identify an artist’s sources, preferences, and even intentions. He can probably talk about those. It’s entirely another thing to connect the images that eventually emerge from the struggle to make a work of art with those materials and desires. During an earlier phase of his career, Sproul once painted an island in a body of water, the island comprised of human bodies arranged closely together. Asked about it, he answered that the image began to take shape in his mind while he was thinking of and contemplating the many people he might have injured during a more youthful, less alert, and less humanely sensitive time in his life. But is that what the final painting means? What it seems to represent? And to whom?
Sproul draws connections between his art and his life, each of which helps shape the other. His day job for years was to aid businesses in recycling their surplus property to each other’s use. In his art, he recycles his own property, including his insights into human nature and his encounters with it. These insights take the form of feelings that he garners from the evidence of witnessed behavior and the various sensory hints he observes directly, constantly, almost obsessively. Among the artists who pay attention to such fundamental data, some carry a sketchbook to record what they see, while others carry a camera. Until recently, Sproul did not sketch, and even now that he does, his sketches are part of the process and not the finished product. His camera, meanwhile, reinforces his capture of those key moments that provide his raw material, which must first undergo one transformation, or many. What emerges are finally the reconfigured people, who reveal themselves largely through their appearances and postures, and secondarily, hints about the spaces wherein they collect, that both influence and reveal them.
He titles his current preoccupation “crowded” spaces, a phrase in which “crowded” is both an adjective and a verb. By crowding, he means having been brought together, whether they like it or not, in attendance for a common purpose that does not transcend their individual ideas and purposes. Instead, as individuals they remain fragmented, unable to form alliances. For Sproul, observing them is a recipe for revelation, a laboratory for the study of human response to stress that includes “fear, anxiety, self-doubt, loneliness, and resilience,” which in turn give him insights into more ordinary behavior.
John Sproul, “Das Boots,” 2025, acrylic on canvas, 48×36 in.
Finally, it stands to reason that the barriers to genuine connection between people extend to language, as well. Sproul’s titles are rich prospects for speculation, just as are the gestures and other clues that fill his crowded spaces. “Babba” might be the name of the only cover band to have been authorized by the much-covered Abba, or it may mean “father,” in which case the two men remaining disconnected on the couch could be father and son. “Clock” might designate the motivation that brings five strangers with the potential to be co-workers out onto what could be a subway platform where they are likely only to get in each other’s way. “Waiting for Rain” has a magical ring to it, perhaps because it usually ends “to Stop.” And “Das Boots,” which invokes the popular German film about a submarine while seemingly naming the sartorial affectation of one of the figures, marks the underground path of so much urban transportation as another form of stress.
It almost goes without saying that John Sproul is deeply concerned with the fragile state of our nation and our planet. A good place to start is with the inability of so many citizen-occupants to connect in order to work together, as they must have for millennia before the entire Earth became one single, crowded space. He works hard at his chosen portion of the task at hand, and it’s up to us to carry this vision into a future where music and art will continue to serve a common cause.
John Sproul: Crowded Spaces, UVU Museum of Art, Orem, through October 18, 2025.