Salmagundi Palettes | Artist Member Spotlight | 2024 | November | John Dowd
Spotlights created by Vanessa Rothe, art magazine editor and SCNY Vice Chair of Salmagundi Public Relations Committee
Q&A with Artist John Dowd
Please tell us about how your first starting painting when you were young. Did you always have a penchant for drawing and paintings? Did your family encourage you to follow this inclination?
Yes, my mother painted when I was a child and I loved the smell of turpentine. It seemed like magic that my mother could take a blank canvas, and make a picture come to life. I would often watch as she took art classes at a friend’s house. Art was something that I could do from a young age that made me feel accomplished. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents who introduced me to the world of antiques and art and my grandmother took me to Rome when I was 15. Yes, my parents were always quite encouraging.
How did you first start showing your artwork? Did you get an opportunity to show at a young age? Was there an important moment when you first decided you were able and excited to be a fine artist?
I studied architecture at Notre Dame because I love architecture, but I also did not think it was possible to have a life and career selling paintings. I never knew anyone that did that, so working in a firm seemed a more solid idea. I am mostly self-taught with some art classes in high school and college. When I got out of college I went to Provincetown for the summer and while there I did some paintings. I met some nice ladies who offered to show my new pictures in crafts gallery and they came to the attention of a couple who thought I had the promise of a career in art and decided to offer me a kind of patronage for the winter months to create a body of work that could be shown in a proper gallery. It was more of a glorified craft shop at that time. I jumped at the opportunity, did a lot of work that winter and opened to a very successful showing the following summer.
Can you tell us how you felt about showing your work at a Gallery. Did your gallery or artists challenge you to create new, different works?
I was very lucky to be in a very small select group in the new gallery called Hell’s Kitchen Gallery with Steve Fitzgerald as the owner 1984. Each artists were within their own lane so to speak. Joel Meyrowitz with his disciplined photographs of cape light, Selina Trieff with her large drawings and expressionist figural paintings, Bill Benhkens gorgeous mezzotints, and my own landscape paintings of cape cod. We really made a diverse group of artists.
What makes you interested in the subjects you paint? Can you please let us know if certain artwork, history, and travels have influenced your subjects?
I have always been interested in light and structures. I guess that stems from my architectural training, and in light because it defines everything ….it changes everything ……it is living ….and is always changing. The light is what keeping things interesting for me.
I grew up looking at paintings in the local art museums in Western Massachusetts. The George Walter Vincent Smith museum and the Museum of Fine Arts had some very fine paintings, with a selection of 19th century Hudson River school, Impressionist and Tonalist works that inspired me. A beautiful early Inness painting with an incredible Barbizon sky and a Worthington Whittredge painting called ” The Lonely Graves” of a quiet landscape at sundown were two which have stayed with me my whole life.
How would you categorize your own work style or genre?
I guess I would call my work realism but perhaps within a distinctive kind of Romanticism. My work can be explained with the attention to light being like the Luminists, my love of structure to Realists, and the poetic nature to the German romantic painters.
Are there any Master artists that have influenced you, living or historical?
I am inspired by the night mezzotints of Bill Benhken, along with the etchings of Martin Lewis, as well as the moonlit paintings by Willard Metcalf which have inspired my focus on night paintings.
Can you try to describe your approach to painting a canvas or the act of creating a work of art. Do you paint during the day or at night, do listen to music?
I prefer to paint at night till dawn for long periods of uninterrupted focused attention. I always listen to music, mostly classical /opera, things that can inspire an aspiration, or remind me of the greatness of doing creative work.
What is one of your favorite works that you have created …and why? What did you accomplish with that particular work that makes you proud of it?
A favorite work of mine was a painting called “Industrial Twilight” it was the view out of my studio window when I lived in Holyoke Massachusetts and for me it was a metaphor for the decline of a certain industrial way of life in America. Most of the picture is in shadow save the last light of the setting sun glimmering on a smokestack for a long-neglected factory chimney. Thematically and compositionally, I was happy with it and it has been honored with a few awards the two times it has been shown.
Please share some of your awards and achievements that you are proud of as an artist.
As for achievements I have been fortunate to have had the possibility of a life creating works that have been due to the support of the art community and collectors and along the way such as the Altman prize at national academy of design in the mid19990’s and some very nice awards from the Salmagundi club as well. I was proud to receive an award at Salmagundi a few years ago and a grand prize for a painting this year in 2024.
Please let us how you came to be a SCNY Artist Member and what it means to you to be a part of the historical art club.
I had known about Salmagundi club for years and decided try to join when I moved into the neighborhood. It was after enjoying a painting workshop in Rome and liking the camaraderie of being around fellow artists I decide to join. I am honored to show on the walls of the historical club and have won some important awards there as well with the show opportunities they have created.