About Me
John McIntyre is a painter who draws inspiration from different directions, including architecture, the natural world, and clouds. His current project, The Ticonderoga Series, explores the situations, attitudes, and emotional lives of pencils. Working in acrylics, John creates scenes ranging from the melodrama of film noir to more whimsical and quirky compositions. Pencils give him the freedom to explore the possibilities of the world’s most familiar tool for writing and drawing. The series is a meditation on his lifelong connection to pencils as their traditional role diminishes.
John follows a few rules for each pencil creation. Every image must offer clues to its subject’s emotional state. The pencils might appear traumatized by habitual chewing, lonely and isolated after being discarded, or hardened by a life of crime. They express themselves without relying on the comic conventions of hands or facial features. Instead, they are posed to reveal their state of mind while never losing their essential “pencil-ness.”
John has worked in the Los Angeles animation industry for 30 years as a director, animator, writer, and storyboard artist. He is currently a professor of animation at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
