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John is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico
and has been working as an artist for 27 years.
He began with woodcarvings in high school.
He won a ribbon on a carving of a pack mule
in the New Mexico state fair. This spurred him on
to think of making art his life's ambition. He
received formal training at the American
Academy of Art in Chicago. He began his
career as a sculpture working in wood carving
and then bronze. Horses have always been
one of his favorite subjects. Growing up and
caring for them all his life enables him to capture
the true spirit of the horse in every medium he
chooses -- wood, clay, bronze or paper.
This multi-media artist chose watercolor and oil
to paint in his signature style of horses which
features them galloping across the land through
the mist, fog or dust. Paints, palaminos, chestnuts
and bays alike all roam together in his ethereal
paintings. The mystical quality that
accompanies his work captivates the viewer.
John was fascinated by fog as a child and how
its effects were able to distort your view of
something directly in front of you. No matter
how you strained to visually grasp the detail,
only your senses would allow you to depict form
and shape of what lay in your line of sight. He
favors watercolor as his medium, because of its
transparent quality and ability to build layers for
his fogging technique. With watercolor and
acrylic washes, John slowly and meticulously
captures this effect in his paintings -- which are
based on more shape than detail, more senses
than visual. He is able to capture movement,
dimension and color in each arrangement
of horses.
Recently he has added cowboys and cowgirls
as subjects. John sketches his subjects from
memory and photographs he has taken himself.
His work can be found in a variety of galleries
throughout the United States.
John Saunders' art was also used on the set of
the Disney movie "Wild Fire." His work has
appeared in various gift shops and catalogs
throughout the United States as well as Japan
and Canada. One of his pieces is in the private
collection of country singer Johnny Cash.
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