John Rowe

The story of artist John Rowe’s career reads like Homer’s Odyssey — filled with triumph, love, deception, failure, and so much more. Like many before him, Rowe’s journey into art began when he was a child. The artist recalls how he had trouble putting down the pencil — how he was constantly observing the world and musing on how to represent it on paper. “Today, I feel like I am finally learning how to paint decently and my current work just might have something to offer. Mostly I am very grateful to be able to do what I love and have so much fun making art.”

The range of Rowe’s work is stunning — and inspirational. While many artists hone their skills on portraiture, landscape, still life, and figurative subjects, Rowe has done it all, from book illustration to movie posters, traditional subjects, and beyond. “I never set out to create artworks in such a wide range,” he says, “but I was very determined to earn my living creating art and accepted almost any project that would accomplish that at the beginning. The wide variety of work I was offered defined its own path. Besides, everything in life is so interesting. To me, everywhere you turn, there is wonder and amazement worth studying, worth painting, worth thinking about. Over time I have been letting the subjects that hold my interest the least go and used personal works to evolve in directions that are meaningful to me.”