John Warren Oakes is a dear friend of ours, and for the last decade he has for been a mainstay of the arts community in Sedona. He is retired from a long and distinguished career as an art professor at Western Kentucky University, and is also, among other things, a former race car driver.

I had the privilege of photographing him while he worked on an abstract painting that he has in progress. The shelves behind him in these photos hold, he estimates, about 2000 of his works, including around 1000 that he has created since moving to Arizona. He still works on new creations every day.

Images 2023 James D. Peterson