Born in San Diego, CA, artist John Duckworth moved to Charleston, SC in 1993. He recently settled nearby with his 4-year-old son, Baze, into a hundred-year-old farmhouse in the rural horse country of Johns Island. Duckworth then renovated an old farm building on the property into a state-of-the art printing, framing, and painting studio.

Formally trained in painting and photography, the California native received his B.A. in Studio Art from the College of Charleston after a foray into biological science that is subtly evident in his subject matter. Serving as assistant to California painter David Baze set Duckworth on his path as a career artist, and he has since had several influential instructors including southern painters William Dunlap and Brian Rutenberg.

Duckworth also seeks inspiration from a plethora of sources such as the vivid colors of Thiebaud, the quiet solitude of Hopper, the cinematography of Jean-Luc Goddard, the captured moments of Cartier-Bresson, the serenity of Rothko, the diversity and range of Richter, and the endless juxtapositions of Albers. Still, Duckworth avoids any particular pigeonhole, forging his own continually evolving style. He moves from brush to camera to computer with ease as he pushes and pulls process and aesthetic, resulting in a unique body of work.

Walking the line between realism and abstraction, artist John Duckworth infuses his paintings, photographs, and films with a passion for pure color, an intimate knowledge of nature, and a rhythm drawn from life itself. Duckworth explores his varying influences and directions simultaneously through several interrelated series. Together they reveal his continuing dialogue between place and process.

Like paintings from a camera, the Landscape Abstracts series features gently blurred photographs that evoke the essence of sea, forest, marsh, and sky in bands of infinitely serene colors. These same meditative moments are captured in a polar opposite environment in the Urban Journey series, with loose references to the streets of the bustling cities in which they were taken. Pushing this aesthetic even further is the Myopic series in which all references to place are removed, leaving only a shimmering dance of circles. Duckworth approaches these series much like a plein aire painter. The meditative photographs are left in their original state as shot on location in a process Duckworth has perfected.

Duckworth’s two main painting series are, at their core, intensive studies of color. Whether deconstructing famous faces in the iCons series or taking apart architecture and live oak trees in the Southern Form series, Duckworth breaks down a form to a new stage of recognition, separating familiar images from their established meaning. Ever playing with boundaries between painting and photography, he is currently painting horses over top of Landscape Abstracts pieces in his latest Caballo series.

As a filmmaker, he frequently collaborates on projects that combine his images with music: collaborating with jazz musician Quentin Baxter to create the 60-minute performance piece Art Moves Jazz; working with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra twice, winning their juried film festival in 2006 and 2007; and partnering with artist Kevin Harrison on Word Clash, which was awarded “Best Short Documentary” at the 2005 New York Documentary Film Festival.

Exhibited internationally in more than 30 key group and solo shows, more than 500 of Duckworth’s mesmerizing photographs, paintings, and films are included in significant private and corporate collections around the world. Most recently, he is represented by Holly Hunt in Miami, Chicago, and New York.