John Paul

Location: ground floor of 1625 10th Ave, Brooklyn
Website:  johnpaulpaintings.com
Instagram:  john_spencer_paul

I have had two painting careers to sustain my studio practice: 1) a sign painter and muralist in the great outdoors of New York's vibrant wallscapes and billboards, 2) a behind the scenes painter and adjuster of scenery for film, TV and theater. These crafts paid a decent living and gave me ideas of economy and scale. My art background is traditional, first St. Louis's Washington U which a decade earlier had been the home to the great lyric painter Max Beckmann, among others. The Masters program at Yale put me in touch with the remnants of the New York school, teachers and critics in the 1960's with a bias towards classical modernism. The state of mind I aspire to may be seen as "retro"' but I am interested in finding ways compositionally to tell stories, often with humor.