JOHN ROWE

John’s artistic journey followed a long path. Fine Art Connoisseur  Magazine compared it to Homer’s Odyssey but let’s not get carried away, it was indeed like many other creative people’s journey.

After high school at Cal State LA John met Al Fiori the head of the design department who encouraged him to apply to the Art Center College of Design to study.
In order to raise the funds John worked two full-time jobs sleeping in two-hour shifts between them until he had tuition money. Art Center gave John an academic education in art, perspective, anatomy, color theory, and rigorous practice in the drawing and painting skills needed to compete in the illustration market.

John worked a full-time job at a mental Hospital all through school primarily working with adolescents, He also taught art and woodshop at a boy’s home working mostly with boys who were ex-gang members, these experiences helped round out the emotional/human aspect of his education. He met many wonderful people.

After school, John packed his bag tucked his life savings of $500 in his boot, and took a Greyhound bus to New York City to seek his fortune. He received an illustration assignment his first week there and quickly ran out of money, took two more full-time jobs, saved one paycheck to continue looking for work in the city, and was offered a job as an art Director at a Latino-focused ad agency on 5th Ave. John ran the Art department for 2 years there. He learned about Advertising and illustration and corporate art and after two years returned to California with a NY illustration agent connection and began to feel lance as an illustrator.

The next 10-plus years of John’s career were very busy working with many major advertising agencies creating billboards TV storyboards murals, and print ads, for clients like Budweiser, United Airlines, the Getty, Samsung, gemological Society of America, and many many others, painting covers for Simon & Schuster Random House, Harper Collins for the black Stallion series of books and many others. John created work for the movies including working with Steven Spielberg, Disney, Universal Studios, and a host of smaller studios. At one point his daily calendar was divided into 15-minute parts of tasks to accomplish. He also served as the President of the Society of Illustrators for 2 years and on the board of directors for 4 more. He is very proud to have been selected by the United Nations to paint 12 postage stamps of endangered spices for them. He maintained a large studio in a commercial space, John remembers his teenage son visiting his studio to ask him “ Dad how come you have all the sucky clients nowadays?”

Disney Fine Art asked John to join them as one of a handful of artists who would be given the freedom to interrupt Disney movies into paintings in their own style and John eventually created hundreds of paintings that were sold around the world. Disney also sent John around the world on Disney cruise ships and to galleries as far away as Japan to share his art.

Slowly John's focus began to shift towards personal fine art paintings his first true love. Although grateful for a career creating drawings and paintings he wished to express more of his thoughts and feelings. He was receiving many portrait and private commissions at this point and those became his primary work.

John lives in Southern California with his wife Meena and his 10-year-old son where he maintains a studio at home.

WORKS