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At present I continue what has been my interest for many years, to develop the plastic possibilites of landscape free of associations with romanticism, history, or description. At the same time I recognize the necessity of order both "out there" (in the Taoist sense) and in the painting.
In the past ten years I have been trying to inform my work with the discoveries of the Chinese who have been painting landscapes and nature paintings for over a thousand years. I have studied many Chinese paintings both here and in China. My aim is not to becojme a Chinese painter but to synthesize my training in modernist formalism with the richness and spontaneity of the work of artists like Xu Wei, Ba Da Shanren, and Shi Tao. However, one cannot obliterate theprofound influence my training with hans Hofmann or my continuing admiration of Cézanne, Monet, Giacometti, and Morandi; I remain willy-nilly a Western artist but a Western artist searching for a world view.
My work is in several media: acrylic, pastel, charcoal, and ink. Scale is important in my work, which ranges from quite large, 8 x 10 feet, to 8 10inches. Sometimes a motif will gradually develop from one extreme to the other.
John Loftus
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