At this time Asaro was a member of both the New York and Los Angeles Society of Illustrators, and was invited to be a judge in exhibitions organized by both groups. In addition, he received the "New York Art Director Club's Award of Excellence," and many of his illustrations were published in national illustrator's annuals.
 
But John Asaro, the artist, was never really at peace with his career in illustration, although he was a success. Asaro recalls, "As an illustrator, it was my job to invent all the images that I was putting down on paper, but I disliked doing this. Illustration required too much mind thinking and not enough feeling. I got bored. What I wanted to be involved with was responding to what I was looking at."
 
In 1967 Asaro took the plunge, gave up his first career, and returned to San Diego to focus on being a painter. By 1970, he had his first one-man show at the Paideia Gallery in Los Angeles. Life became a mix of painting for galleries and teaching art classes.
 
At Art Center he taught perspective and life drawing. The school had provided him with a crude model of the head, which he found to be a poor teaching tool. He had been reading about the various planes of the head which fit together to make up this complex form, and he had the bright idea to sculpt a simplified version of the head made up of these planes. Asaro estimated that this project would take about a week. The final product was at last ready after three years. This bust became an unprecedented success and has been used by art instructors, students and professional artists throughout the world. It is still available through Planes of the Head. (See note.)
 
Asaro recalls, "I personally learned more about the effect of light falling on the form while teaching at Art Center. Illustration had taught me a lot about composition, but not about light. I asked my students to think about the origin of the light, what color it was and whether it was warm or cool. I made them find, as I was discovering, that each plane in a form has its own color and value, depending upon the quality of light that strikes it. Everything we see is reflected light."
 
At the age of 40, Asaro married. He and his wife, Janet, and their soon to be born daughters, Devon and Amber lived at the beach. Asaro fans and patrons are very familiar with the images he painted in this setting. On these days, he would set up his easel along with his camera in the bright sun and paint his girls enjoying the sand and sea. Asaro recalls, "I hadn't anticipated these paintings being so successful. I was just painting what was in front of me." He also experimented with enriching the color. "My wife would hold 4-foot by 4-foot cardboard reflectors to bounce warm light from the sand into the shadows." You can feel the off-shore breezes in these gorgeous scenes.
  
These paintings are direct descendants of the work of the great Spanish impressionist of the turn of the century, Joaqu¡n Sorolla (1863-1923). Asaro did make a pilgrimage once to see Sorolla's work in Madrid, but when he arrived at the museum-home, he found that the building was under reconstruction. He pleaded to be given a quick tour of the art, but was told by the watchman, "Only the Queen can come in." In fact, Asaro feels much in common with quite a variety of artists, from Monet and Sargent to Matisse and Picasso. As Asaro states, "I can be influenced by anyone good."
 
At present, Asaro and his family live in Carlsbad, California in a home with flowing spaces and modern furnishings in earth tones that set off the Asaro paintings which illuminate the walls. Separate from the house is a large, two-story high studio with skylight, a sofa at one end, the easel at the other, and not much clutter. In the yard outside his studio, Asaro has planted banana trees, which he uses as background shapes in his paintings. The latticework that shields his outdoor spa also shows up in pictures.
 
Asaro primarily works from slides which he takes of his subject matter. To make these easier to see, he built a shielded box, about 2-feet square and open to the front, which sits at eye-level on a stand to the left of his easel. He projects the slides into this box.
 

John Asaro Reflections in a Pond Oil on Canvas - 30" x 40"

He tackles a painting by first making six sketches to work out the composition. He then does an oil sketch for values and color. Asaro points out, "My starts are abstracts. I don't recommend this for students who I think need to work from nature, which has a lot of information to give them. But these abstract beginnings work for me."
 
As for the finish of a painting, he has this to say. "When you are young, you get high on your art. The more realistic it is, the more exciting it is. But now I get most excited when I am able to put down fewer strokes and still achieve the effect I'm after. I want to be able to see the structure of what I am painting. I reach a point and then I don't have anything more to say after that."
 
Asaro rarely teaches these days, although he is holding a workshop this February at the Scottsdale Art School for a fortunate few. But there is another way to get some coaching from Asaro, by studying his book, Asaro, A New Romanticism, published in 1991 by Artra Publishing Inc., Encinitas, California (ISBN 0-936725-06-0).
 
John Asaro is currently represented by the Robson Gallery in San Diego, Nedra Matteucci Gallery in Santa Fe, and Clagget-Rey Gallery in Vail, Colorado.
 

 
This article was originally published in the December, 1999 issue of the California Art Club newsletter

Return to Past Articles