However, the “greatest and most lasting influence” is, in his own words, his teacher, Frank Auerbach, who, together with watercolour artist Patrick Procktor, made him “rethink his strategy,” to develop from the tight, measured style of his early work, into the looser, fluid style which currently typifies his work.

John Kiki's long career has included exhibitions in museums and galleries such as the Royal Academy, Tate, Hayward Gallery, Barbican Gallery, and Serpentine Gallery in London; OK Harris Gallery in Soho, New York and Galerie Wahrenberger in Zurich. The influences on his work are many and varied. There are elements of Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon, Matisse, Euan Uglow, de Kooning, Baselitz, Picasso, the abstract expressionists.