John Hiemstra

I have been drawing and painting as long as I can remember, but I was 16 the first time I got paid to paint "art", working on the set of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" (left).

This first opportunity to work as a scenic artist came through Interlochen Arts Academy, an arts intensive high school where I studied stage and lighting design & production.

I then designed and contributed to several student theatre productions while attending   Drew University  in Madison, NJ, though I graduated with a major in philosophy. I also painted houses and freelanced as a lighting tech for   Playwrights Theater of New Jersey  and a few others.

I pursued a Masters of Fine Arts in Design & Production at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC.

After two years I moved back to California, this time to San Diego, CA where I worked as a scenic artist for the San Diego Opera and then Scenery West of North Hollywood, CA.

Freelancing while working on our home in San Diego's Historic Sherman Heights led to several public art opportunities in our community, including a major permanent public art installation at the Cesar Chavez Trolley Station near downtown San Diego.

I have been slowly developing a series of original fine art paintings in the studio, which arise from the same 20 years of rigorous investigations into light, shade and shadow as the revealers of form that ground my commission and contracting work.

Haunted by childhood daydreams of fairytale kingdoms and visions of ancient gods and goddesses enthroned in heavenly cloudscapes, these paintings relentlessly pursue the defining line between the fleeting gifts of nature and the eternal constructs of man while reveling in the architectural details of both.