“You can’t stare death in the face and not feel sad about it. But I’m determined to remain upbeat and positive,” says John Green (49), aka Johnman, the spray-paint artist who is documenting his cancer journey on the Instagram account, @johnmansjourney.
“I see it as cathartic. Sharing my journey with a community of followers on Instagram allows me to get things off my mind,” says Green, who was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a malignant aggressive brain tumour, in March.
The English-born artist lives with his wife, health economist Siobhan Browne, and their 10-year-old son Sam in Blackrock, Co Dublin. He says he first started recording videos on the social media account following extensive surgery to remove the tumour at Beaumont Hospital earlier this year.
“I’d wake up early and go into this little family room at the hospital. I needed to talk because my mind was so active from being on steroids. It was my way of letting my family and friends know about what was going on as I didn’t have the time or energy to engage with them one-to-one on a personal level,” says Green.
He had already built a couple of thousand followers on his @johnmanspraycan Instagram account to promote his art so the platform was not new to him.
Over the last six months or so, he has shared unpleasant details of setbacks (including a blood clot in his lung that resulted in immediate hospitalisation while on holiday in Galway), but he also shares his efforts to find the right balance of taking it easy and having a good quality of life.
“The only time I get really emotional and struggle is when I think about Sam,” he says. “I’m at peace with myself. I look back at my life and I feel it has been f**king brilliant. I’ve been blessed. My life has been full of fun, love and positivity.”
Green says his main motivation to record his cancer story is not to have a super-strong social media presence, but to leave something behind. “I hope that it will be a legacy for Sam to see how I coped and be inspired by that,” he says.
As a self-taught artist, Green first started creating spray-paint art as a side hustle when living in Devon. “I was working in fresh food produce and then food manufacturing at the time. I took on the pseudonym Johnman in 2011 when it was popular in urban art to have one,” he explains.
John Green creating art at his studio in the garden of his Dublin home. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/The Irish Times
Green studied at university in Bristol, and the city’s street artist Banksy has always been an inspiration to him. “Anyone who works with hand-cut stencils and spray-paint is inspired by him,” he says.
In his artwork, Green turns digital black-and-white shaded images into hand-cut stencils which he embellishes with vivid primary colour spray-paint.
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He had a solo show in London’s Graffik Gallery in 2014 and has participated in the Art Osaka contemporary art fairs in Japan. In Ireland, he has sold his work at the annual Art Source fair in the RDS in Dublin, on the railings at St Stephen’s Green and, recently, in a pop-up art shop in Dún Laoghaire Shopping Centre. He plans to have a stand at Art Source in the RDS next month.
Residents in Dún Laoghaire will be familiar with his striking murals, namely Crimean Cannon on Patrick Street and Saol agus Grá on Musgrave Street. He also painted three outdoor traffic signal boxes: Embrace the Rain at Stillorgan Shopping Centre, tigers on Mount Merrion Avenue and a leopard on Leopardstown Avenue.
Green met his wife at their best friends’ wedding – her best friend was the bride and his the groom – and they started seeing each other when Browne was on a secondment in the UK. One of the first gifts he gave her was a collage of overpainted train tickets from their journeys to meet up. Overpainted train tickets were one of his first commercial successes.
John Green’s mural entitled Embrace the Rain on a traffic signal box in Dublin. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA Wire 
Together Again by John Green (also known as Johnman), which was painted as a gift to his now wife Siobhan in 2013
Green moved to Ireland in 2014 and the couple married in 2017. When Sam was two, they were struggling with their work/life balance and didn’t want their son to be in a creche full-time.
“I gave up my job in 2018. I wasn’t happy and I wasn’t coping so I took redundancy. I wanted to give my art a go. I knew that I’d never make the same money but I’ve been infinitely happier and have never looked back,” he says. Initially working in a shed behind his parents-in-laws’ house, he installed a studio in the garden of their home last year.
The sudden death of his father on New Year’s Day in 2023 was a big blow to Green and he says he found it hard to be inspired to do his art for some time afterwards. He has similarly lacked inspiration to do visual art since his cancer diagnosis. “I took up the guitar again after my dad died and I have found that it has helped me again more recently. Also, I have some poems I want to write.”
Since his cancer diagnosis and radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment, Green hasn’t had the same physical stamina as before. “It’s a grind. I’m a big man and I’m used to being strong. The physical deterioration is difficult. And as the tumour grows, I know it will impact me in ways I can’t control.”
He also says that since his hair has grown back, it’s less obvious that he’s sick. “I’m conscious that you wouldn’t know anything was wrong with me but I’m quite frail. I’m not able to lift things. I struggle with stairs and I can’t stand up on the bus,” he says. He has also been prohibited from driving since his surgery.
Green recently got a Hidden Disability badge and a Jam (Just A Minute) card, which people show to transport operators, shop assistants or service providers to indicate that they need a little more time to complete tasks in public.
Green says his priority remains to be an inspiration to his wife and son. “My number one priority is to spend quality time with my family and that they are put through the least trauma possible [by my illness]. If @johnmansjourney is an inspiration to people, that’s great too.”
Art Source is at the RDS November 13th-15th
Follow John Green @johnmansjourney and @johnmanspraycan