Art & Galleries
Artist spotlight: painter John Banovich
By LEANNE HAASE GOEBEL
John Banovich, a master wildlife artist, attempts to create art that is timeless, ancient, and primitive.
Passing Along the Lessons She Learned, oil on linen
"I try to have no sense of man in my paintings. Viewers don't know if what they are looking at was last month or 300 years ago," Banovich says.
He also tries to capture the essence of the place and the wildlife he paints. Banovich travels several times a year to study animals in their natural environments.
This year he will go to China in search of wild pandas and make several trips to Eastern and Southern Africa, a continent he has visited 27 times.
"There is an ancient mystery in the eyes of the beast," he says. "Looking deep within, we come face to face with ourselves. They are the windows to our past, and the prophecy of our future."
Banovich grew up near Butte, Montana, and created his first wildlife painting at age 7. He was selling his art to non-family members at 10 and knew in the seventh grade that he wanted to be an artist, though Banovich admits he had no concept of what that meant.
He studied art and zoology at the University of Montana and graphic design at the Art Institute of Seattle, but on his first job interview he realized he did not want to be a commercial artist, so he became a personal trainer and invested in real estate.
"But I was not a happy person," he says. "I knew I wanted to paint."
In 1993, at the age of 29, Banovich made the leap to become a full-time artist when he won Best of Show in the Pacific Rim Wildlife Art Show, sold two large paintings, and signed with a publisher.
He sold his fitness business and embarked upon a safari to the Okavango in Botswana, where he fell in love with Africa.
His quest to study and paint wild pandas in China, jaguars in Brazil, and the white-eared kob in Sudan will keep him occupied for years to come.
Issue: July 2009
