John Summers

John Summers began painting late in life, while battling cancer, in 2008. He produced more than 1,000 paintings until the disease took his life five years later. He would regularly take his creations to the edge of his property in DeLand, Florida, and there, beneath the oak trees, would hang them along the split-rail fence. Next to his artworks he hung a sign that read "Free Art." By the end of the day, they were gone, taken home by people who were attracted to his renderings. Mr. Summers, in doing this, often brought art to homes devoid of it. His canvases surely brightened the residences of delighted inexperienced art collectors but those with sensitivities to color field paintings were treated to rich, evocative and carefree, but nevertheless, precise resolutions to the often fleeting form of abstract painting.