Photograph by George Sakkestad
Tercera owner Seb Hamamijian admires 'Walkway,' one of the works of John Maxon on display at the gallery through Nov. 10.
By Shari Kaplan
California painter John Maxon, whose New Landscapes series is currently on display at Tercera Gallery, says several factors led him to embark upon the life of a professional artist.
His childhood love of artistic pursuits was enhanced during his years at Menlo-Atherton High School, which he says was fortunate to have three full-time art teachers. He originally thought of becoming an architect, so he enrolled in an architectural drawing class while attending San Jose State University. While taking a required companion course in freehand drawing, Maxon realized painting was his first love and got permission to submit his assignments in that format.
With two degrees, many exhibitions and years of teaching as a college professor and lecturer behind him, Maxon is still coloring canvases and doing what he loves. After living for 20 years in the Santa Cruz area, he moved to Napa about 18 months ago.
"Having lived in two different and beautiful places, I've brought in the beauty of both. Landscape [painting] allows your mind to move more freely," Maxon says, explaining that his paintings are not usually specific locales, but rather composites of various places he has visited, blended with images generated from his own mind.
"I look at my work as trying to put out positive images to the world. The end product is something hopefully uplifting to the viewer--they might not even know why, but they're left with a feeling."
The expansive oil-on-linen piece "Distance," is reminiscent of a fog-swept valley in the Santa Cruz mountains, although it could be anywhere. This, like "Meeting of the Ways," "Study Blue" and many other paintings, offers an impressionistic, momentary glimpse in rich, colorful strokes of a landscape ever-changing with the movement of light, wind or water.
In "Valley of the Moon," a glowing full moon rises out of a sky that has not yet dimmed to twilight. Gently rolling hills covered with grapevines or other crops color the landscape with the green, orange and russet hues as summer gives way to autumn. In "Walkway," which also resembles a scene from the Wine Country, bright purple wisteria vines hang low over an arching trellis, through which the viewer can see the beckoning wooden door of a rustic, white-walled building in the background.
In contrast to these is "Cypress," in which two of the California coast's familiar windswept trees overlook the cerulean waters below a cliff. "Time Away" and "Inlet with Boats" are some of the other paintings that deal with more coastal images.
There are also several still lifes, all of which feature vibrant flowers blooming within vases or pitchers. Maxon says he enjoys these because they offer a break in subject matter and also because they have their own challenges in terms of how to portray them.
New Landscapes runs through Nov. 10. Tercera Gallery is located at 24 N. Santa Cruz Ave. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. For more information, call 354-9484.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, October 30, 1996.
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