FROST FINE ART

JOHN TOWNSEND

John Townsend was born in 1929 in Lacrosse, WI, and received his MFA from the University of Minnesota. He began creating his painted wood reliefs in the early-1960s, and exhibited them throughout the decade at Byron Gallery, Amel Gallery and Martha Jackson Gallery, New York.

In the late-1960s he began making similar reliefs out of opaque plexiglass, exploring the same optical and perceptual themes, and returned to painting as his principal medium in the early-1970s. Until his retirement, Townsend was professor of art at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.