John Evans (b. 1945, Mt. Vernon, NY) earned his BFA and MFA at Boston University. Having settled in Massachusetts, Evans was early inspired by his surroundings, creating loosely abstracted landscapes depicting boats and sunsets. His attraction to nature is more recently revealed in free-form paintings of water lilies and other plant life. Evans is drawn to bright colors and applies them liberally to his paintings, seeking to create drama among forms that are both planned and impromptu: “I want to make it happen gesturally and spontaneously, build a coherence, build a richness, build a complexity, so it doesn’t go away after a glance... So it’s something that you can spend some time reading and savoring. Making something out of nothing, giving form to expression, is a very powerful, satisfying drive. That’s what brings me out to paint every day.”
Evans has been the focus of numerous solo exhibitions. His work is placed in important public and private collections, including the Smithsonian Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge. Over the years, his paintings have been featured in ARTnews, Art in America, and the Boston Globe, among others.