I started my art career drawing caricatures on the Ocean City boardwalk when I was 16, here in Maryland. All my life I’ve loved to draw. I’m 52 now, though of course I feel infinitely younger, and certainly much luckier than I deserve to be. My mom was my first teacher and is a gifted artist - in addition to oils she drew meticulous pen and ink drawings of racoons, birds, mice and cats.Face Place She used to buy me Walter Foster “How to Draw” books at Sherwin Williams - in the early days it was mostly books on cartooning which I loved. She also took me to art classes with “Miss Mary”, Mary Cover in Baltimore, who taught in her finished clubroom/basement.

I graduated from High School a year early and started working on the O.C. boardwalk that summer. My Dad paid for half of my college tuition (Thank you!) and I was able to make up the other half with just my summer earnings drawing caricatures - hard to believe now-a-days. I did this for my entire time at the Maryland Institute College of Art (we used to call it “The Institute” back then, which was befitting it‘s inhabitants at the time, though it’s now more genteelly referred to as MICA). I drew at Irv Finifter’s Face Place II, between Pollock Johnny‘s and an ice cream stand which famously featured chocolate covered bananas. I was one of four caricature artists, and the place also had numerous portrait artists - it was a fantastic training ground for young art students at the time. Notable artists/cartoonists from whom I learned much include, Tom Williamson, B.W. Norris, Sam Thongmonkolchai, and Dave Thompson - and most of all the big man himself - Irv Finifter.

Well, that brings us up to now. I paint, I teach classes and workshops, and I draw occasional cartoons for the Mid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association’s newsletter featuring “Plein Air Kitty”, which is actually my cat, Ruby, anthropomorphized into a painting artist cat. I’ll be posting those cartoons on the “Assorted Paintings and Studies” link. Updated news and current painting projects will be listed on the “News” link. Anyone interested in purchasing a painting or taking a class, please feel free to drop me an e-mail.

Thanks for reading! - John