Artwork of John W. Ekstrom

     John Warren Ekstrom was an American artist who came of age in the early nineteen fifties era.  A self admitted Abstract Expressionist, his early art reflects the style and sensibility of that post World War II movement; loose sweeping gestural strokes make up vibrant yet earthy colored organic forms.

     By the mid nineteen sixties, Ekstrom’s paintings had become more geometric, consisting of simple perfect shapes drafted with rulers and compasses; the vibrant mottled colors from years past had now flattened into opaque planes.  These changes in style reflect the influence of the Minimalist movement at that time.

     In the seventies, perhaps discouraged with chasing the latest “ism”, Ekstrom began to experiment more with borders and textures created with other media, particularly graphite, to produce shape and line, “The line… is seen at the same time it produces an image. This occurs more than in painting – something out of nothing.”  As the decade passed, Ekstrom’ own unique style finally began to emerge; graphite dominated, he composed imagery in layers, a cubist technique.  Art historian and artist, Bill Behnken, describes Ekstrom’s graphite works as reminiscent of the Precisionist from the earlier half of the twentieth century. Precisionism came about as a reaction to Cubism in Europe and is considered an outgrowth, a sort of American Cubism.  Over the next couple of decades and for the rest of his life, Ekstrom produced graphite dominated works and honed his signature style exploring the relationships of shape, pattern and line.

     Towards the end of his life, though always an accomplished draftsman in the traditional sense, Ekstrom finally began incorporating representational imagery in his conceptual art as can be seen in his Statue Series; although the subject in these works is accurately drafted, a fertility statue of sorts, the realism is used as a means to abstraction as color and line are distorted beyond representation or exaggeration.

     Although John Warren Ekstrom’s style has changed and evolved over the years there has always remained a constant; regardless of the context of his work, the time in his life or the era it was produced, the elegance of composition and the mastery of draftsmanship speak for themselves.