John McDevitt King’s practice comes from a life spent drawing, painting, traveling, and working in a gemological laboratory. Often captured through allusions to interior space, his paintings and drawings come out of the role memory and location plays in forming our experience. Intimate, elusive elements, as well as light in all its iterations, are used to indicate a search for the individual example, the ephemeral incident, the gaps between thoughts, and the moments when things crystallize.
John lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received his BFA from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and his MFA from Hunter College in New York. He also holds a Graduate Gemologist diploma from the Gemological Institute of America. Throughout his career King simultaneously pursued his studio practice, primarily in painting and drawing, along with a gemological practice built on his studies of visual observation and color theory. The dual paths inform each other: much like the scintillation that we associate with diamonds, King's multi-layered encaustic paintings reflect and refract light, revealing subtle changes as we move around them, or simply gaze in contemplation.
John exhibits regularly in the United States and Europe, most recently Intersections I at Anita Rogers Gallery and a solo show at Merge Stone Ridge in New York, including a catalogue with an essay by Susan Yung and comments by Sean Elwood. His work can be found in numerous public and private collections, notably the Brooklyn Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Harvard University Art Museums, Zimmerli Art Museum and the Weatherspoon Art Gallery. He is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant, and a Vermont Studio Center Artist Residency.