Dowling Walsh Gallery

John Koenig

John Koenig was born in New Mexico in 1927. He spent most of his time painting Taos, New Mexico from 1978-1997 before moving to Asheville, North Carolina. He has studied painting and illustration in New York City at the Morgan School of Advertising and the Art Students League and sculpture with Jack Pappasion. He also studied at the Academia de Belle Arte in Florence, Italy and at the Academia de Barcelona in Spain. Outside of his painting, Koenig was also a producer and director his own motion picture company, Lumiere Films. "The soul of my subject matter, its vital essence, remains forever my obsession in painting . . . if that can be captured, then the work comes alive, fraught with its own note, its own music. Without that spark, that living radiance, the painting remains a dead thing."

So speaks John Koenig, a Taos painter whose work truly glows in both color and technique. His subject studied and his painting planned, he works quickly, getting to the heart of what he wants to show. With little belaboring, a characteristic freshness is maintained throughout his work.

John Koenig's background includes study of painting and illustration in New York at the Morgan School of Advertising and the Art Students League. There he also studied sculpture with Jack Pappasion and had a career as producer and director of his own motion picture company, Lumiere films. His film work received honorable mention at the 1964 American Film Festival in New York. Koenig also studied art at the Academia de Belle Arte in Florence, Italy, and at the Academia de Barcelona in Spain.

In 1969, Koenig moved to Maine to resume painting after his film career. He has lived and painted in Taos, New Mexico since 1978.

In addition to oil painting, he works in the medium of encaustic, wax painting, which achieves special optical qualities of translucence, texture and brilliance. The word literally means "burned in," and the process involves the heating and mixing together of dry pigment and wax.

His work has won many awards and prizes and is found in private collections both in this country and Europe. His work has been exhibited in New York in the National Arts Club, the National Academy of Design, Allied Artists of America Show, Salmagundi Club and the Fulton Gallery. He has also exhibited work at the Philadelphia Art Museum, at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, the Farnsworth Museum and Wiscasset Museum in Maine, and The Taos Galleries in Taos, New Mexico and Scottsdale, Arizona.