After completing a Bachelor of Fine Art Honors degree, John taught art for sixteen years in South Africa and in England.  He then embarked on a career as a full time artist.

Inspired by the South African countryside with its dramatic colours and abstract landscape shapes he dedicates his days in his studio into transforming these images into oils on canvas. 

"I strive to express in my work a joyous sense of being at ease with my own life, an existence living in peace and harmony with nature.  I try to create a new poetic reality through tapestry-like landscapes of light.  I am fascinated by the power of color, and I endeavor in my paintings to search for the mystical longing of light that dwells in all of life.  I hope to express an inner tranquility, in contrast to the fast-moving busy pace of life as it is today."

He paints the beauty of landscape, of creation, of magical moments, such as the break of day.  His art represents a vision of a world of happiness and peace.

His most important inspirations and influences are the linear graphic works of South African painter and printmaker Cecil Skotness, the pure colour of the Fauve painters, the magical world of Peter Bruegel and the harsh light of the German Expressionists.