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| JOHN TREADWELL | |
 John Cristopher Treadwell born 10.19.66 Whidbey Island Naval Base, Oak Harbor, WA. A strange one from the get go: John was born crying real tears [it's true, ask anyone]. "My only memory of Washington was an overcast day and my dad held me up to pick a Macintosh apple from a tree." John was whisked off to the Philippines for the next year, absorbing the East from his mother's hip, seeing Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and Bangkok while she juggled him, a diaper bag and an 8 mm movie camera. Vivid memory: "at night in my crib watching the geckos run along the walls and saying 'night night geckos', oh, and getting bit by a monkey in Malaysia." After coming back through San Francisco last summer of 69 and bouncing around the South, Pensacola, Little Rock, finally ending up in Dallas, Texas, in 70. A strange and quiet kid, always drawing and dreaming with a wild imagination and an eye for details. John never took any art classes in middle or high school and graduated in 1985 from Warren Travis White High School. Things took a quick turn when he took a year off before college and somehow it turned into five years. He drifted, experimented, worked a dozen different jobs, from bussing tables, changing lightbulbs on the scoreboard at Reunion Arena, to construction work in cities all of the US. "I had a sudden revelation while digging in a ditch in a pit underneath a mall in Little Rock talking to a co-worker 20 years my senior, and I knew I needed to get back to school, or else I was looking into the future at myself, forty, digging a ditch."  In 1989, John discovered Santa Fe. "I just KNEW
… it felt right." The mountains, the air, the light … it all came
together for this flatlander. Having no prior fine art training, John
always took an interesting approach to his art, working in layers
of depth and information; yet, a light, free child-like quality that
keeps his work fun and interesting. "My work is in a constant state
of change, I'm very difficult to pigeon hole or label and so is my
art, the one thing I know is it's gotta be different at least a little
bit or it gets boring, and boring ain't fun. Look, I think people
buy the window they don't have, so what's wrong with painting zenscapes
that go with the couch or the trim or a rug? Nothing, especially when
it pays the rent or buys more paint. Hell, I also paint windows for
people who like an adrenaline rush, and for people who like the circus,
and especially for that guy that took the last piece of the puzzle,
and Bear, my cat. But mostly I paint because I have to, it's a crime
to let art die in your head." |
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