about
John Leblanc
My work has developed in many ways over time. Initially, technique was front and center – drawing incessantly, making sure I was using my paint in the correct manner. The time I spent at the Art Students League in New York City was vital to me and my work. Many hours were spent drawing and painting from the nude model along with long discussions about what art is or could be. Living in New York city afforded me access to world-class museums where I honed my artistic tastes and philosophy. Oil paint has been my primary medium, although I have worked with acrylics, watercolor, pastels, collage as well as welded metal. Each art medium has its own special qualities that I delight in using. Through all my time training and later working on my own, I have believed strongly that I should strive to have my own approach and style. My love of life and how I express that love is shown in the bright colors and strong shapes that I use in my artwork.
Education
Painting classes started at 10 years old while I was living in New Hampshire. After moving to Maine I spent the next few years studying with Maine Artists. After High school I traveled to New York City where I attended the Art Students League.
The “League” with its tradition and innovations, was instrumental to my development. In New York City I had access to the finest museums in the World. Since returning to Maine my artistic development has been the continuous assessment of my own work.
Education
Painting classes started at 10 years old while I was living in New Hampshire. After moving to Maine I spent the next few years studying with Maine Artists. After High school I traveled to New York City where I attended the Art Students League. The “League” with its tradition and innovations, was instrumental to my development. In New York City I had access to the finest museums in the World. Since returning to Maine my artistic development has been the continuous assessment of my own work.
PEOPLE
wHO iNSPIRE mE
Paul Cézanne
In Cézanne's mature pictures, even a simple apple might display a distinctly sculptural dimension. It is as if each item of still life, landscape, or portrait had been examined not from one but several angles, its material properties then recombined by the artist as no mere copy, but as what Cézanne called "a harmony parallel to nature." It was this aspect of Cézanne's analytical, time-based practice that led the future Cubists to regard him as their true mentor.
Vincent van Gogh
Alone in a studio or in the fields, van Gogh's discipline was as firm as his genius was unruly, and he taught himself all the elements of classical technique with pains¬taking thoroughness. He copied and recopied lessons from a standard academic treatise on drawing until he could draw like the old masters, before letting his own vision loose in paint. Although he knew he needed the utmost technical skill, he confessed to an artist friend that he aimed to paint with such "expressive force" that people would say, "I have no technique."
Amedeo Modigliani
Modigliani modernized two of the enduring themes of art history: the portrait and the nude. Characterized by a sense of melancholy, elongated proportions, and mask-like faces influenced by such sources as Constantin Brancusi and African art, Modigliani's portraits are both specific and highly stylized, each uniquely revealing its sitter's inner life, while at the same time unmistakably "Modiglianized," to use the words of one critic.