Bio

In 1991 John Calvin participated in a group show at New York's Ariel Gallery, now called Agora Gallery. The 1997 the Jeffrey Moose Gallery sponsored an exhibition in Seattle's Painted Table Restaurant in the Alexis Hotel, of acrylic paintings on canvas divided into two categories: large unstretched, horizontal works, composed of dark lines on a plain white prepared canvas surface and slightly smaller vertical works of stretchers composed with darker hues of blues, blacks, greens and browns.

The unstretched paintings, such as "Lava Trek", 18 feet wide by 48 inches deep and

"Land Passage" of the same dimension, exhibit powerful, intuitive mark-making, meandering black and gray lines chart a rough, unpredictable path as they describe the ground, similar to a topographical map, revealing rocks and frozen liquid forms of solid lava. From April to August of 1998 four paintings of this genre were shown in the atrium of Seattle's Ranier Square, hanging from the balcony.

The stretched canvases are equally evocative of the extreme angles and contrasts in the Hawaiian environment. "Oversoul", 90" x48", is an atypical vision of paradise. Just under 8 feet high, this brooding painting suggests a powerful but narrow waterfall gently slipping into the ocean behind a group of tall, grooved volcanic boulders. There is a peculiar similarity between the artists palette and colors in the Northwest.

Individual paintings and drawings are owned by the State of Hawaii, The City

and County of Honolulu. First Hawaiian Bank, Bank of Hawaii, HMSA, Amfac Corporation, Theo H. Davies, Hawaiian Telephone to name a few in Honolulu.

Privately owned paintings are located in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Vancouver, London, Tokyo, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Manila, San Diego, Seattle, Scottsdale and Honoulu. John Calvin is an artist whose subject matter will be familiar but whose stlyle and technique are international and flaw-less.