John Levinson studied at Cambridge from 1968-71, and again from 1973-5.  As an architecture student, his designs and drawings were filled with the same very individual vision as his later paintings.  Inspired and influenced by his travels in India, expressionist art, and his own affinity with nature, they were very different from the modernist efforts of his fellow students in the early 1970s.

In 1971, John travelled to the USA and spent time in Chicago, looking at the domestic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. 

After obtaining his degree, John chose to become an art student in London.  He undertook the Advanced Painting course at St Martins, over the next two years.  He had spent many months in India, both before and during his time at Cambridge.  Images of mountains, rivers, and the landscapes of the Himalayas, as well as the forms and symbols of Indian religion and culture, played a large part in his work.

John returned to Cambridge to complete his Diploma in Architecture, but never subsequently practised as an architect.  He joined a group of Cambridge friends living in the Holborn and Kings Cross areas, and continued to paint, write poetry, plays, and his novel, and to make films. 

His paintings, large in size and filled with colour and abstract forms, were not what was deemed fashionable in the London art scene at that time.  John had no commercial success as an artist (and perhaps no wish for this).  He showed little interest in building relationships with galleries, preferring to spend time painting in Wales and Kings Cross, and in conversation with friends. 

As is clear from his poems and writings, John became more depressed as he approached his thirties, and as the lives of his friends changed around him.  He took his own life in 1979, while living alone near the Caledonian Road.

An exhibition of John's larger paintings was held in Kings College Cambridge, in 2001.  A separate exhibition of his water-colours took place at Kettles Yard, Cambridge, in the same year. 

Writing in the catalogue for the exhibition, John's friend Antony Gormley said 'around John, life was never boring, and he never found it so. He was always on the side of the poet, never the dull practitioner.  John's water-colours have all the vitality, intellectual and affective, of their creator, and it is a great pleasure that finally there is a serious exhibition to celebrate them.  I'm convinced that had he lived, his work would by now be well known.