The Art

As an artist working and living in Philadelphia, John has focused his career as a painter on exploring the vitality of the human existence, using bold, and at times both dark and light, colors and hues to bring the models and scenes before him to dramatic life on the canvas.

At a young age, John’s work was realism. His paintings very much centered around the intimate play and emotion between a man and a woman in their most private of settings. He used striking contrasts of light and color to draw out the emotion of the scene, and to imbue the painting with a strong sense of vivacity.

As John progressed, both in age and in his work, he began to feel a certain limitation about realism — and he turned to abstract painting, following a powerful urge within his creative self. Spending a number of years as an ‘abstract artist’, John became aware of a special place that exists somewhere between the rigidity of realism and the boundless stretches of the abstract: John calls this new frontier ‘Flashing Exuberance’.

Flashing Exuberance is John’s attempt to interact in a more immediate, more physical sense, with his models and art. John now takes an ‘abstract’ approach to realistic subjects, blurring the lines between where reality and the human spirit meet.