John Encinias says, "As an artist, my goal is to create paintings that project a peacefulness ~ that make the viewer comfortable with the naturalness of what is being depicted."

A profile in the February 2002 issue issue of Southwest Art said, "Anyone who has walked a country lane in the amber glow of later afternoon or hiked in the winter woods beneath bone-white leaf-bare aspens will appreciate the art of John Encinias.

"There's nothing flashy about these moments or the way he depicts them in his paintings, yet something about the light, the mood and the evocation of the senses is memorable.  With quiet determination and drive, he has established a reputation as one of the West's top landscape and still life painters."

Encinias says, "I've always worked from  a variety of subject matter, even in the sixth grade when I was concentrating on my first art project.  From the beginning, I wanted to be able to look at something and record."  His mother aided his desire by enrolling him in the Famous Artists School at the age of 15.  The experience made him realize the basics of drawing, color, composition and perspective were the essential ingredients in art.

"For me," Encinias says, "the challenge of painting is the process itself . . . there are no hidden meanings in my work, just my personal expressions of how I felt about what was in front of me as I painted it."

In October 1991, he was honored with a one man show at the Frye Museum in Seattle, Washington, and in 2000, at the Birger-Sandzen Memorial Gallery in Lindsborg, Kansas.  His work also has been featured in group exhibitions at Alburquerque Museum, New Mexico; National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, Wyoming; and Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Encinias also has had works on exhibition at the United States Embassy in Rome, Italy.