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JOHN'S FILM ART CAREER: John began doing art for the entertainment industry in 1975. His first job was with Channel 11 "KTTV" in Hollywood, California. This very creative job was taping miles of steel railings with chrome tape for a Jerry Lewis telethon and then painting bleachers with some horrible smelling grey paint.....and all the time thinking "for this I went to art school?". He got his first job with the film studios a year later working for Jerry Gebr at Universal Studios. Jerry is one of those very talented people that worked behind the scenes and occasionaly got a credit. He was probably the best portrait painter in Hollywood during those years. At Universal John worked on scores of projects for advertising and feature films. The high point at Uni was getting hired to do 60 pieces of art for a mini series called "Harvest Home". This project included painting an oil portrait of Bette Davis along with many drawings of her for the film. The male lead in the film was an 'artist' so everything in his staged studio had to look similar. Other Universal Projects included Grey Lady Down, Coma, Smokey and the Bandit 1 and 2, Animal House, Back to the Future II, Flash Gordon, Xanadu and lots of TV productions such as Quincy, One Adam Twelve, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, The Bionic Woman and scads of others. In 1980 John was hired by Bill Anderson at Disney's Imagineering and worked for a year on the new revision of Fantasyland in Anaheim, CA. Jobs included working on the designs for Snow White and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. He later worked with others on the full scale scenic painting of these attractions. Another highlight at Disney was the painting of two very large portraits of the Dowager Emperor and Emperess for the China Pavillion at Epcot Center. John eventually got a call to go to J.C. Backings at MGM Studios and worked there off and on for 15 or so years, long enough to see the changeover from MGM to Lorimar to eventually Sony Studios. His favorite project at MGM was duplicating several Van Gogh paintings for a Disney film. He also did a mural for that project. Other Studio projects that did art for were Murder She Wrote, Bird, Ghost Busters, Bonfire of the Vanities, Adams Family 1 and 2, Star Treck VI, Deep Space Nine, Public Eye, Single White Female, Bodyguard, Coming to America, One from The Heart, Blues Bros., Santa Clause, The Car, McArthur, V, and Starman. Portraits done for productions include: Bette Davis, Norman Lloyd, Brian Kieth, Elton John, Ben Cross, Angelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Ricardo Monteblan, James Brolin, and others. |