Jack Wright
Phantom, Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
BIO
John Cushing Wright (known as Jack) was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1919. He attended Williams College and the St. Paul School of Art, directed at that time by Minneapolis artist Cameron Booth.
In 1942 he entered the army, married in 1945 and was discharged in 1946, after which he studied for two years at the Institute of Design in Chicago.
Wright moved to California in 1950. For a number of years he was an architectural color consultant. In 1957 he and his wife (also an artist), and four sons, moved to Mexico, where they lived first near Morelia, and then in San Miguel de Allende
In 1959 the Wrights built their house on a ridge near the village of Inverness, California.
He died in 2003.
EXHIBITIONS
1945 Kentucky & S. Indiana Annual, Louisville (Honorable mention)
1946 Harriet Hanley Gallery, Minneapolis (one-man)
1947 St. Paul Gallery (one-man)
1947 Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
1947 Evanston Art Center
1947 Minneapolis Institute of Art
1948 Betty Parson’s Gallery, New York, NY
1958 Galerie El Zaguan, San Miguel De Allende, Mexico
1961 California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco
1964 Tour Gallery, Albuquerque, New Mexico
1968 St. Paul Art Center
1968 Trutton Gallery, San Francisco (one-man)
1972 Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul
1974 Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul (one-man)
1974 Marshal Field Gallery, Chicago
1974 Verde Valley School, Sedona, Arizona (one-man)
1975 Lester Gallery, Inverness, California (one-man)
1975 College of Marin, Kentfield, California
1976 Lester Gallery, Inverness, California
1978 Galerie Schreiner, Basel, Switzerland
1980 Ritz Gallery, Point Reyes Station, California (one-man)
1982 Gualala Arts, Gualala, California
1983 Glastonbury Gallery, San Francisco (one-man)
1984 David Cole Gallery, Inverness, California
2003 Gallery 1212, Burlingame, California
2008 Paul Mahder Gallery, San Francisco, California
2008 Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco, California
John Wright was an abstract painter whose internationally recognized work was largely influenced by dreams and images from the unconscious. Mr. Wright was a member of an acclaimed group of post-surrealistic abstract expressionists in Northern California, including Gordon Onslow Ford.
“In the paintings of John Wright mysterious forms float majestically through vast fields of color. A curiously sensuous and satisfying amalgam of the geometric and organic, these forms behave as if subject to slow-moving but potent directional forces; forces that stimulate surprising permutations in color and contour as the shapes connect, intersect, and pull apart while traversing the picture plane. Contradictorily placid yet hinting of intense drama, they create an aura of disquieting beauty and cosmic power. Wright’s most reductive unit of expression is a simple dot, which he uses as a basis for endless formal invention. Most often the dots are arranged so as to coagulate in shapes with relatively distinct borders, though subtle spatial variations and minute shifts in hue contribute to a sense of interior flow and transition. At other times they are strung out individually to create thin threads of undulating color; still at others they are gathered together in a dense mass of energy, which gradually disperses as they radiate from a focal point.
Wright’s work remains uniquely his own, an oeuvre of disarming subtleties and stunning beauty.”Ross Anderson, Director, Montgomery Museum of Fine Art
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