About John Ennis
John Ennis is a nationally recognized portrait artist. His work is included in prominent collections throughout the United States and abroad. John has received 17 national and international awards, 12 of these from the Portrait Society of America. The subject of numerous magazine articles, he was interviewed for an article on portraiture in the May 2009 issue of the Artist's Magazine. John also authored articles for this publication as well as the International Artist Magazine.

In his words, "There are few art forms that lend themselves more to the expression of the human experience than painting a portrait. I use what time I have with a portrait subject to explore their life, their personality, and the perception of the people that know and love them. When I step up to the canvas, I am searching for something about them, their character, their love of life, their place in our world, but ultimately I am expressing my perception of them. It's a shared experience and great fun. Left behind is a short but often intense bonding with an individual, family or group of people, and a legacy that outlives us all."

A native of Bucks County, PA, John is a member of the Portrait Society of America, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, and the Artists of Yardley. He enjoys the camaraderie of the Bucks County artist community, often painting with friends from live models or the landscape. John and his artist wife Jo-Ann, and their two boys live in Yardley, PA, just outside of Philadelphia

Art History
John's art studies began at age twelve and have continued throughout his life. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, he moved to New York City to study painting at the Art Students League of New York. He considers this a seminal moment in his career, taking classes with painters whose art training had been passed down through generations of teachers dating back to the French Academy of the nineteenth century.

John studied painting at the Art Students League in the late 1970's under Robert Emil Schultz, and Jack Faragasso, and also privately with Michael Aviano. All three teachers had been students of Frank J. Reilly (1906-1967), an extraordinarily popular instructor who taught at the League for many years. Reilly studied with the famous League teacher Frank Vincent Dumond (American 1865-1951), who in turn studied under Benjamin Constant (1845-1902), Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911) and Gustave Boulanger (1824-1888), important painters of the French Academie tradition. Frank Reilly also studied with George Bridgeman (1865 - 1943) and through this traced his teaching lineage back through Bridgeman's teacher Harvey Dunn (1854-1952), a student of Howard Pyle, the father of American illustration.

John initially followed Shultz's path and became a successful bookcover illustrator, working for every major book publisher in the United States. This work would everntually get published in over twenty foreign countrues.

Parting ways with illustration, John established himself as a portrait painter early in this century and has found a constant demand for his work ever since.

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