“The landscape has always spoken to me, even from my earliest memories growing up in the country working the fields on my father’s tree nursery in Western NY. At best, the mundane can become music, even a symphony, the ordinary, beautiful. Painting for me, is translating to canvas what the eye “hears”, and doing so in a way that considers the lessons of the artists who have come before.”
In college, John studied design at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, and then illustration while on scholar-ship at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. John began painting on weekends in 2001, and subsequently studied with Scott Christensen in Jackson, Wyoming. In 2004, he left a successful 18 year career as a designer and art director in television, and moved with his family from New York to Colorado to pursue painting full time. In 2006 John’s painting, “Trail’s End At Crater Lake,” won an “Award of Excellence” with the top landscape award at the Oil Painters of America National show. In 2007 Mr. Taft was featured in "Landscapes of Colorado", a book curated by Ann Scarlett Daley, Associate Curator of the Institute of American Art at the Denver Art Museum. In 2008, John's painting, "Hidden Valley" was awarded second place out of over 330 paintings at the Nomadas del Arte's plein-air show in Santa Fe. This past May John sold out at the "American Masters" show at New York's Salmagundi Club.
Download a catalog of John Taft's work. (PDF)
