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Terry St John — Biography
| 1934 |
Born |
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Terry St. John is among the most noted of the second-generation Northern California painters influenced by the 1960s Bay Area figurative movement. Like his teachers Richard Diebenkorn and James Weeks, St. John relies on intuition and direct observation in his boldly colored figure and landscape paintings. Using gestural marks, visceral paint, and pared-down, geometric forms, St. John's painterly realism reflects the dual influences of the Bay Area Figurative painting and the Californian Society of Six plein-air landscape painters of the 1920s. More palpably than these precursors, however, St. John’s work offers viewers a powerful experience generated by the paint itself, and by his use of experimental and deeply expressive color.
Abstract space is extremely important in St. John's large figurative paintings, both in the simplification of the figure to a series of light and dark planes and geometric shapes and in the buildup of the background and its threatened intrusion upon the model.
St. John allows his compositions to break free of any constraints imposed by his subject matter. Using a combination of "viscosity and speed," he uses large brushes and a wide palette knife to build, scrape, scrub, and layer his paintings until the colors and surface begin to establish an independent coherency. This approach reflects St. John's interest in the neoclassical works of Nicolas Poussin.
Incorporating the direct and responsive realist legacy of the Society of Six painters, St. John's landscapes emphasize the importance of place and the "steadfastness of landscape painting."4 He paints directly from the subject—primarily the areas near his home in Oakland and the East Bay of San Francisco—and then, upon returning to his studio, pushes the subject matter towards abstraction by paring it to its most elemental forms.
After serving as curator of modern painting at the Oakland Museum of California (1970–1990), St. John until recently chaired the art department at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. His paintings are held in the collections of the Oakland Museum of California, the City of San Francisco, and the San Jose Museum of Art. |
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