Biography
John Court is an American portrait artist and landscape painter who lives and works from the Azores.
Born in 1948 in Annapolis, Maryland, Joe Court, as he is known to friends and family, began painting at age 11. He attended private boarding schools, then matriculated at Cornell University, where he studied painting with Norman Daly, Kenneth Evett, and Gillian Pederson-Krag. Court earned a BFA from Cornell in 1970 and an MFA in 1972, then returned to Richmond, Virginia, to continue his career as a portraitist.
Court relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1984 after visiting the state to paint former U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater’s portrait for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
In the same period, he began regularly visiting Portugal’s Azorean Islands, where he designed and built a home and studio complex he calls “Perseverando.” He has lived and worked in the Azores full-time since 1995.
