John Connell (25 June 1940 – September 27, 2009) was an American artist. His works included sculpture, painting, drawing, and writing.
Life and work Connell was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended Brown University, in Providence, RI (1958–1960), the Art Students League, NY (1960–1961) and New York University (1962) where he studied Chinese print making. His first show was in New York in 1962.Art in America, October 1979
In the mid-1960s, he moved to California, where he worked as the set designer for the San Francisco Mime Troupe. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, he worked primarily in the Southwestern United States, where he painted large muralsAlbuquerque Journal, July 30, 1978 and was visible in New Mexico's most respected art galleries, being part of the Santa Fe artist group NerveArtlives, 1984 and gaining a reputation for his large installations. He is particularly well known for his drawings, some of which are done in charcoal and spray paint and can be as large as twenty feet high and thirty feet wide.Tierra Encantada, 1990, Kansas City Art Institute
Connell used plaster-of-Paris in the 1980s, and later turned to tar, paper and wax, in large figurative sculptures.Pasatiempo, April 12, 1996 He also used bronze, cement, wood, and chicken wire.Los Angeles Times, Feb. 14, 1986 His works on paper sometimes include elements of collage. In the early 1980s, he mostly gave up using commercial paints and began making his own out of iron oxide and pigments. In later paintings, he used ashes, mud and earth.Art Papers, May 2006 His work has also included elements of writing and occasionally audio tape.Revered Earth, 1990, Center for Contemporary Arts of Santa Fe
Connell's influences included Hokusai, Rembrandt, Balzac, Dante, Giacometti and De Kooning. Buddhism is a central theme, and he cited wabi as his aesthetic.Hess Art Collection, Hatje Cantz, 2010
Death Connell died on September 27, 2009, in Mariaville, Maine.
Projects Some of his better-known projects include: The Construction of Kuan-Yin Lake (1982–1989): A multimedia project that included sculpture, painting, writing and audio and was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.The New York Times, December 14, 1986Santa Fe Reporter, March 8, 1989 The Raft Project (1989–1994) : A giant sculpture/painting project with painter Eugene Newmann. It was commonly perceived as being a takeoff on Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa.ARTnews, Summer 1993
Public collections holding his work
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Arkansas Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas The Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico The Hess Collection, Napa Valley, California Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, Las Vegas, Nevada Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, California Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, Alabama New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Scottsdale, Arizona University of Arizona Art Museum, Tucson, Arizona University Art Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico
References
External links Artist's website