Man Shadow by John Strickland

John Strickland Biography

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John Fletcher Strickland (February 4, 1941-December 15,2022) was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and continued to live in the Hoosier state throughout his life. He graduated from Broad Ripple High School in 1959, Wabash College in 1963, and earned his Master’s degree from Goddard College. As a musician, writer and artist, he was creative and artistic to the core: an Indiana Hidden Treasure.

As a professional jazz musician, Strickland was personal friends with David Baker, the Indianapolis native who came out of the club scene along Indiana Avenue (as did Wes Montgomery, Freddie Hubbard, J.J. Johnson, and many others). Baker went on to found the jazz studies program at what is now the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Strickland had been taking private cello lessons from Baker and they struck up a close friendship.

Strickland was an educator at Franklin High School, Indiana where he touched the lives of many young people. He kept a private art studio creating voluminous works of art mainly for his own enjoyment when he wasn’t playing music or writing poetry. He  was a very rare person who was truly brilliant and contained many multitudes: he was kind, strong, good, and inspirational. He lived his life in art, literature, and music and excelled in all of these. His artwork is as varied as he was. He has left behind a legacy of paintings representing music, whimsy, abstraction and more. Some of his paintings were signed JFS. Others were left unsigned.

Strickland wrote poetry, played gigs (upright bass) and painted into his 80’s. Truth is, Strickland did not like growing old because it got in the way of the things he still wanted to do – painting, writing, the occasional nip of Tito’s, a secret drag on a cigarette – he did them anyway and always found time for people, just as they did for him.

His artwork can be found in Edinburgh Scotland, London, Seattle, San Francisco, Houston, Indianapolis, Cambridge Massachusetts, New York, Barbaste France, and Corpus Christi Texas. The American Art Resources commissioned three works to be displayed at Community Hospital North in Indianapolis.

Artist’s Statement

I have been painting and playing jazz compulsively for many years. My training has been in the form of informal apprenticeships to two masters, neither of them painters. Curt Cole Burkhart, a black and white photographer, schooled me in composition and emotional effects achieved by the manipulation of space, contrast and tension. Jazz master David Baker taught the same things and more, adding the joy of trusting one’s trained intuition. It was also instructive that both were masters of living joyfully, and it showed in their work. Painting for me is right-brain problem-solving of problems of its own creation. It can be fun, but just as often it is maddening. I work in acrylics because their fast drying time allows me to make the many changes that are typical in my work. I am happy to have this “history” show through. This process continues till I surrender to the will and wisdom of intuition. I agree with the painter who said, “What ends up painting is what I would have wanted to paint if I could have thought of it in the first place.” The “Ambiguscape” paintings are intended to suggest rather than define landscapes. I do this for the same reason one might prefer poetry to prose. My hope is that they invite people to look into them, rather than merely look at them and that this engagement rewards them with an experience worth having.

-John Strickland