John B. Woolsey
Arroyo's and Salt Pan, 2023
Acrylic and flashe on woodcut collage on canvas
17 x 13"

Artist Statement
The work consists of a collage of pieces of a 18" x 18" woodcut from 2019, part of a series of works based on tree trunks/roots/bark, mounted on canvas and painted with acrylic and Flashe. The works in this series, which were in a 2023 solo exhibit at the Zillman Art Museum in Bangor Maine, are visual metaphors for the scales of time, as well as transformations--In this case, from a close-up of a tree to an imaginary aerial landscape created over many thousands of years.

Artist Bio

John Woolsey grew up in southern Wisconsin where he spent much of his time exploring the rich natural world around him. At age thirteen, he started to paint from nature. As a teenager he was an avid bird-watcher and at the age 16 had his first job as a scientific artist. His art has explored the natural world since then, first painting the landscape broadly and then focusing on its myriad details.

John studied art and biology at the University of Wisconsin (BS, Art) and painting and printmaking at the University of Pennsylvania (BFA, MFA) where he studied with Neil Welliver, Alex Katz, Elaine de Kooning, Hitoshi Nakazato, James Brooks, Yvonne Jacquette, Rackstraw Downes and others.

He taught at the University of the Arts and the Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia. He had a long career as a scientific illustrator and a developer of art programs for many best-selling college science texts, and he developed science animations and interactive multimedia projects in the life sciences.

During his fine-art career, he has had over 20 one-person exhibitions and exhibited in many group shows throughout the US and internationally. His work is represented in many public and private collections.

John maintains a studio in Philadelphia and has had a summer studio in a small village in coastal Maine for many years. His work has been represented by galleries in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago and Maine.

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