John Bannon was born in 1933 in Baltimore where he attended Saturday classes at The Maryland Institute of Art from the age of eight through high school under the tutelage of Anne Didusch Schuler, Betty Wells, and others. At age seventeen, his drawing and painting skills were recognized with a four-year scholarship to college level of the Maryland Institute. He graduated with a BFA degree and The Henry Walters Prize. The University of Pennsylvania awarded him a year's graduate credit and advanced standing, culminating in 1960 with an MFA in the History and Practice of Painting. For twelve years, John was a student protégé and assistant to M. Jacques Maroger, former technical director of the laboratories of the Louvre, who trained him in the drawing and painting techniques of the old masters. He assisted Maroger in teaching artistic anatomy at the Maryland Institute and collaborated on Maroger's research of lost old masters painting formulas. A member of Oil Painters of America, John has exhibited his art for more than forty years in the U.S. and abroad. He has been represented by more than 25 galleries and has presented more than 40 solo exhibitions. In Baltimore during the sixties, John was a co-founder and exhibiting artist of The Six Realists Gallery, which received wide acclaim for what was then a defiant stand for traditional art. In 1970, he was also a founder of the Dorchester Art Center, which still flourishes in Cambridge, Maryland. Awards to John Bannon's artwork include: The Henry Walters Prize, the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, Purchase Prize, The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., Purchase Prize, The Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia, PA, Purchase Prize, The Easton Academy of Art, Easton, MD and others.
