John Richard Perry Sr. is one of the foremost marine artists in the United States today, and son of the famous marine artist Robert Lee Perry. He is a seventh-generation painter and is proud to carry on a family tradition of fine art.
Since the age of seven, John has been developing his skill as an artist with a lifetime technical study of sailing ships and their exciting history which enables him to depict these vessels as well as coastal ports as they appeared in the days of sailing ships, with precise accuracy and attention to detail.
His paintings are included in the collections of former President Gerald R. Ford, Queen Elizabeth II, the U.S. Coast Guard Museum at New London, Connecticut, the Custom House Maritime Museum at Newburyport, Massachusetts, the U.S. Navy at the Pentagon, and many other corporate and private collections.
Mr. Perry is past President of the Greater Haverhill Arts Association in Haverhill, Massachusetts, a member of the National Maritime Historical Society and the American Society of Marine Artists, and is a former advisor to the North East Cultural Arts Center. He is listed in Who's Who in the East, Community Leaders and Noteworthy Americans, Men & Women of Distinctions, Artists USA and the International Registry of Achievement.
John works exclusively in oil on canvas and thoroughly enjoys the challenge of creating the illusion of movement in the oceans he paints and then coupling that with weather to make everything in the artwork correct in every detail.
He has a very extensive maritime library that contains many rare books that he uses in research for certain ships and details, and depicts them as they would have been seen by other ships at sea, in all types of weather and from every conceivable angle.
John was born in Rockland, Maine in 1945 and his family lived in Camden, Maine where they kept a large 97-foot schooner moored in the harbor. It was in those early years at Camden that he first learned from his father how to sail, and they frequently sailed to the West Indies and back, giving John extensive experience at sea. When the family began to grow with the addition of a sister and brother, the large schooner became more expensive to maintain so his father sold it to the Vanderbilts who sailed it around the world in the early 1950's and from there into obscurity; he never discovered what happened to that ship.
John's father then built a 42-foot gaff-rigged ketch that they continued to sail after moving to Rockport, Massachusetts in 1955. John currently has a 30-foot Chesapeake Bay skipjack, steel-hulled, that has given him much enjoyment. However, as demand has increased for his artwork, he has found less and less time for sailing.
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