John Dorchester

John R.C. Dorchester

Artist Biography:

John R.C. Dorchester graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1982 where he won The Emma Cadwalader Prize for Portraiture, the Catherine Grant Award for Landscape and a William Emlin Cresson Special Commendation award for his paintings. Since then, his paintings have been nationally recognized in juried exhibitions across the country. John is also an award winning commercial filmmaker and musician.

John was one of the first artists to be accepted by the prestigious Center For Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), a non-profit dedicated to assisting emerging visual artists. He is a member of Oil Painters of America, American Impressionists Society, The Philadelphia Sketch Club, and an Elected Member of Allied Artists of America.

Artist Statement:

I think of painting as a kind of magic. It is a form of sleight of hand. Saying more with less, that is where the art lies. Magritte's painting " Ceci n’est pas une pipe," notwithstanding, creating a representational image with nothing more than pigment and a brush is comparable to practical magic in which a magician makes viewers believe they have seen something they have not. A rabbit from a hat? A dove out of thin air? Indeed, a painting is not a pipe, or a barn, or a face. It is paint. And what beautiful paint! There is an elegance and transcendence to a good representational painting's illusional deception. I prefer the illusion to be convincing at first blush, and the more the deception is revealed upon closer inspection, the better. Often times I hear people comment about how my painting "looks like a photograph" and yet, always, if you inspect closely, sometimes not even all that closely, it is nothing but an assemblage of paint strokes, sometimes bold and unforgiving, giving the illusion of a unified whole. I look at Sargent to get inspiration.

Of course, light plays a key role in both the illusion and the magic. Like many painters I love light. And it informs all my work.

My favorite paintings convince the viewer of the veracity of the image they see when viewing the painting from a distance, and then break apart into their respective elements and become more abstract or even non-sensical when viewed up close. My paintings are meant to be viewed from a distance

Website: John Dorchester

1/14