This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  New Orleans artist, John Campbell created Southern landscapes.
When Campbell died on Friday, May 13th, 1997, at age seventy-two, he was alone in his little duplex apartment in New Orleans East, apparently without any family. He owned the whole duplex and rented out the other (front) half of it. He also owned a building over on Lake Avenue in Metairie, where he taught art classes along with his friend and fellow artist, Bernie Wiest. Bernie taught cartooning, while John taught oil painting to a collection of about ten well-off New Orleans women.
John admired the painting of Robert Wood and used a lot of bright colors, such as Cobalt Blue, which he would mix together to get his browns and other darks. He once said that his favorite color was yellow. He particularly liked the Da Vinci (DVD) Raw Sienna. With these yellows he liked to mix Holbein's Mineral Violet (the compliment of yellow). I'm fairly sure he liked to use Sap Green also. He was able to produce the subtle greens of the Southern landscape with this array of colors. He did say once regarding these greens, "Blue won't get it." I find this curious, because apparently Robert Wood liked to use Cobalt Blue for his greens. But Wood did not major on the "Southern landscape."
John had studied art in New York City and, I think, in France. He used oil paints and I never knew him to use watercolors. He had worked at one time for Naegle Outdoor Advertising in New Orleans.
Campbell once said, "I could paint a tree when I was fifteen." The painting he painted over and over, in different contexts, was the little country shack juxtaposed against a huge billowing Southern Live Oak tree. Usually, this tree was dripping with moss, and this was his typical expression of Louisiana.
Submitted by:
Hal Bennett,(student of John Campbell at his Lake Avenue building in Metairie (west New Orleans). September 10, 2003
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