John Laub portrays the Tuileries, a Parisian park, with lush brushstrokes that define the shapes of visitors and the surrounding foliage near a fountain. Vivid color draws viewers into the scene, evoking the warmth and leisure of a sunlit stroll. Poet and art critic John Ashbery described the underlying structure of Laub’s work: “John Laub shows us segments of urban or marine landscape that seem on the point of reverting to a previous geometrical identity. It's as though, in looking over their shoulder at a lapsed order of things, his very contemporary, noncommittal images had frozen at an intermediate stage somewhere between timeliness and timelessness.”
Born and trained in Philadelphia, Laub was an openly gay man whose career intersected with the AIDS crisis. Through the 1980s, he volunteered his design skills to many direct-service organizations, making posters and graphic ephemera. Laub earned his BFA in graphic design from the Philadelphia College of Art (later the University of the Arts), and then studied filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute and architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Ultimately choosing painting, he exhibited at Philadelphia galleries including A. J. Wood and Gross McCleaf before relocating to New York in 1984. Laub was deeply involved with the Fire Island Pines Art Project, serving on its board of directors and co-chairing its annual group exhibition, The Art Show. He taught summer painting classes from his Fire Island Pines home for a decade.
