John Atwater

John Atwater has been painting landscape and coastal imagery for more than 25 years. His early work concentrated on maritime scenes from Maine, where he would spend the month of July painting and shooting photographs that would become the basis for his studio work during the remainder of the year. Today, he includes the Connecticut landscape in his subject matter, and has painted scenes ranging from Rand’s View on the Appalachian Trail in Falls Village to Mystic Seaport. The Hudson River and Luminist schools of painting have been instrumental in influencing the style and techniques of the artist’s current work. “Many of my coastal scenes from the eighties, depicted midday sunlight which is fairly straight forward to portray. Now, I much prefer to paint a scene in which the color of the light plays a major role in influencing how the landscape is perceived, such as a late afternoon scene in which the warm light infuses the landscape with a golden glow, or the scene a few minutes after sunset, when the sunlit clouds transition from canary to peach, then red and violet.”

John received his formal art training at Washington University School of Art in St. Louis, Missouri. After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1977, he briefly worked as a commercial artist before devoting himself to landscape and maritime painting. In the 1980s, he became known for his watercolors painted in a contemporary representational style, created with bold color and a strong graphic design. John’s work has appeared in American Artist, Nautical Collector, Yankee, Connecticut, Motor Boating and Sailing magazines. He is a member of the American Watercolor Society and the American Society of Marine Artists and is president of the Connecticut Watercolor Society.