John Fowler is an acrylic painter on Cape San Blas.  As a child, he longed for far-away places, poring through stacks of National Geographic Magazines and dreaming of going back in time to join Charles Darwin on his global sailing expedition to illustrate newly discovered plants and animals from around the world. Now John has turned that vision into reality, or at least an abstraction.

Twenty-two years as a zoologist has taken John to many destinations around the world, each of which have fired his imagination.   Trained at the New Orleans Art Academy, his avocation as an artist received notice when, at Zoo Atlanta’s annual fundraiser, the Ford Motor Company’s top marketing executive purchased one of his charcoal sketches of a mountain gorilla.  A hiatus from his zoo career has afforded John the time to paint.  With his latest acrylic paintings he uses watercolor techniques to bring nature’s imagery onto stretched canvas with texture and bold color. As a naturalist, John is heavily influenced by images from the natural world. Even his paintings that do not directly portray images of nature he gives an organic quality to their color, texture and theme--playful abstractions and interpretations of elements of the real world.   "Mostly, I wish to abstract from nature the beauty that sometimes goes unnoticed, focusing on the detail of a leaf or flower, and bringing to the observer, the earthy colors and patterns that intrigue and please the eye.”
 
John's work can be found at Albert F's (Seaside), Signature Gallery (Tallahassee), Meridian Gallery (Thomasville), and Kay Fuller Interiors (Albany).  For more information, contact him at .