Artist’s Marine Scenes Had A Whale Of A Start

A marine artist with an eye for detail will exhibit some of his work at the Expo ‘97 Environmental Forum for Business that will be held at the Spokane Convention Center on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Artist John Jennings will also be available to sign prints of his underwater and whale scenes. Jennings, who sold his first art work when he was 9, began painting scenes of marine life in 1970 after he witnessed the struggle of a beached whale on the Oregon coast. The whale looked at him, he said in a phone interview, and Jennings realized that it was dying and there was nothing he could do.

“That was a very profound moment,” he says. “That was kind of the launch of my marine career.”

He dives as frequently as he can, but no longer paints exactly what he sees when he dives, as he did when he first began painting marine scenes. His first paintings were too true to life; they were dark, murky, even scary looking.

Jennings says he has learned that diving doesn’t supply the right kinds of scenes. “I had to paint from my heart, from what I felt,” he says. His oil paintings, awash with light and color, are friendlier now that the darkness is gone.

He is currently working on several large murals, seven in Newport, Ore., and a 360-foot-long mural of a pod of killer whales on the wall of a factory outlet mall in Lincoln City.

He has several pieces on display at Flaherty’s Framing and Fine Art Gallery in Coeur d’Alene.

Three of his works are on permanent display at the St. Petersburg Museum in Russia. Jennings is only the third American artist to receive an invitation for a one-man show at the St. Petersburg Museum.

Tickets to attend the trade show will be $10 at the door. For more information on attending the two days of conferences and presentations, call 323-2641.