Jon is influenced by the subject matter and approach of 19th-century landscape painters Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church, William Trost Richards, John Frederick Kensett, and Alfred Thompson Briche of the Hudson River School.

His way of working is also informed by European Romanticism and the Barbizon School which were influential to subsequent movements like Impressionism and, in the USA, The Pennsylvania Impressionists. The poetic and transcendental writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, are also influential to Bandish, regarding how we can understand ourselves within the beauty of the natural world, embracing solitude and taking time to observe our surroundings.

There’s magic in being a kid with an endless summer filled with hot days on the beach and ice cream cones packed with jimmies on the boardwalk at night. These ice cream cone paintings I hope bring some of that nostalgia to you the viewer.  Remind yourself of the joy in something as simple as an ice cream cone on a hot day.  Whether it’s from an ice cream truck in your local neighborhood or a soft serve stand on a beach boardwalk, you’d be hard-pressed to find this part of Americana does not bring a smile to anyone’s face.  

The joy in nostalgia as an intention is matched with an intensity of detail. I work in a more traditional method of painting. I draw the entire composition in detail before I paint.  I work an underpainting that begins as a value study and continues with glazes of local color. Each Jimmie on the ice cream cones is painted one at a time, almost as if to remember each moment of an endless summer long ago.  

These paintings are about color and fun.  There’s a flavor for every pallet and a story for every summer memory.