When a group of out-of-town visitors came to Orange a couple of weeks ago, they visited the Stark Museum of Art and then went to see a painting at the Orange Public Library. Artist John Alexander, who has paintings on display at galleries across the country, also has a painting at the library.
Alexander, who has lived in New York City and Long Island for almost 40 years, brought friends on the trip. He showed them the painting he did while he was a student at Lamar University.
Alexander’s painting is on a wall of the reception area for the library offices. On another wall is a moody painting of a gray abandoned wooden building. That one is by Lynn Sweat, an illustrator whose most famous work is for the original “Amelia Bedelia” book series. Sweat, too, is a Lamar graduate.
Library Director Brenna Manasco said Bob Papania left the two original paintings to the library in his will. He died in the late 1980s.
Alexander’s painting is about 5-feet by 4-feet in dimension and is a wooded water area in muted golden colors. In two places, the white in the canvas shows through where the paint has flaked off. Manasco said the damage happened in the weeks after Hurricane Rita. The library had a small hole in the roof and wet carpet. Electricity and air conditioning was out for an extended period, causing the heat and humidity to affect the painting.
Alexander, though, said the damage could easily be fixed. Manasco said he liked showing the work to his friends and posed for photographs with it.
Alexander was born in Beaumont in 1945 and received his bachelor’s degree from Lamar. A 2008 feature store about him in “Garden and Gun” magazine has a sub-headline “How a swamp rat from Beaumont, Texas, clawed his way to the top of the art world.” It’s not the only feature in magazines. “New York” and “Smithsonian” magazines are among periodicals with stories about him and his work.
The “New York” magazine had a headline of “Big Man on Canvas: Painter John Alexander commands high prices and famous friends.” The story mentioned the friends including Paul McCartney, Lorne Michaels, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, Jimmy Buffet, Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd.
Alexander earned a master of fine arts from Southern Methodist University and then taught at the University of Houston. He moved to New York City in 1971 with a weekend retreat in Amagansett on Long Island, where his studio continues. He is known for his nature paintings and satiric interpretations of humans.
Besides the Orange Public Library, Alexander’s work can be found in permanent collections like the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Dallas Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A number of famous people own his works, including Paul McCartney, the late Robin Williams,
Many of his paintings include swamp scenes. His Orange trip included a sight-seeing jaunt to Adams Bayou. Manasco said he told them he wanted to see the Stark Museum and the place where the man was killed by the alligator.
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