About John’s Work

As a painter and architect, I focus on objects in the landscape. In my meditation and Tai Chi practice, I’m conscious of the energy around me and the simple breath of the body, and I resist the desire to grasp at thoughts and possessions as solid or permanent.

In my landscape work I am drawn to the shallows of low tide where subtle imprints and topographic shifts in the mud flat mark the presence of a buoy, mooring or dory, as well as record the ebb and flow of tides. The littoral zone, exposed at low tide, is paper thin, reflecting the fragility of this impermanent landscape – a third type of terrain mediating between land and sea. The gently bending planes of sand and water in contrast to boats, rocks or marsh grasses provide endless subjects for the eye.

My still lifes are most often composed by assembling temporary landscapes of familiar objects. These objects are easy to identify and quite ordinary, but in their relationship to each other, assembled on a new ground plane, they seem to be quietly anticipating something. For me they are anything but ordinary. They too leave their traces in shadows, reflections, and soft imprints as the vessels at low tide leave traces in the mudflat.

The Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi describes the ordinary beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. Who’s to say what beauty we will find in the ordinary things we come upon and the repeated cycles of the natural landscape, and how these temporary vistas leave their impressions upon or lives?