John’s Works on Paper

When I first started painting I couldn't figure out how to use a brush. Trained as an architect and growing up as an avid draftsman of birds and buildings, I was much more accustomed to the feel of pencils and pens moving over paper. Caroline suggested that I try pastels and that I "stay loose and just enjoy the color and the mark-making". It took a while but I started to really enjoy making pastel paintings/drawings.

The act of drawing and the need to be mark-making at all times will never leave me alone it seems. I’ve said more than once to Caroline that I have the things I have in life because I love to draw. Drawing lead me to art and architecture; art school lead me to Caroline and that lead us to our children; our livings are now earned by drawing and delineating in one way or another. She is an art teacher and artist. I am an architect and artist.

Paper has always seemed to me to be the foundation of drawing while the pen or charcoal or graphite moving across it is the stick frame of the house that rests on top. In my work the act of drawing turns up in almost everything I do, whether it’s sketches on paper, paintings on paper or paintings on canvas an panel. It seems I’m always on a quest for the perfect surface to paint and draw on simultaneously. Paper provides one answer. There is nothing really the same as the feel of the different kinds of tooth under a brush or at the end of a stick of charcoal.