John Bennington is an artist who completed his first oil painting when he was thirteen years old. He was born in Lancashire, England, of Scottish and English parents. He was educated in Scotland and England. His art education began at the Salford School of Art, Lancashire, after winning an art scholarship at the age of sixteen. His father died when John was seventeen years old and he accompanied his mother back to Prestwick in Ayrshire, Scotland, where he embarked upon an apprenticeship, training as a textile designer within the Scottish Textile Industry at Replin Limited, Ayr. On completion of his training, he became a full time student at the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, where he graduated, gaining an international degree in textile design. He taught art in Scotland, while selling his textile designs to manufacturers all over the United Kingdom, as a freelance textile designer. He married Diana. Mary. Elizabeth. Graham, of Stewarton in Ayrshire and they had two daughters, Cara and Gail. The marriage ended in divorce and John married Mary Reid of Paisley, Scotland and Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia and re-located to South Africa. After a year of designing printed textiles for the Good Hope Textile Corporation, in King William’s Town, Eastern Province, South Africa, they re-located again, to Rhodesia, where their daughter, Kirsteen. Laura, was born. and  John was the chief designer of a carpet company in the Eastern Highlands. After owning his own graphic design and silkscreen printing business, John was offered a position in South African Higher Education and became the Head of the Department of Applied Design (Textiles, Clothing and Graphics) at the Port Elizabeth Technikon, South Africa, from whence, some ten years later, John and his wife relocated to California, then to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where they now live, but still thinking of moving on, to Kansas.  Their greatest joy is that they are now a united family, with six grandchildren and Cara, married to John Dooley, in Ayrshire, Scotland, Gail married to Simon Bunn, in Buckinghamshire, England and Kirsty, married to Eric Elliott in Lawrence, Kansas, USA. John and Mary have been married for thirty-seven years.  

John Bennington has lived, traveled and painted in many countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa and the United States. He has always painted in oils, wherever he may have been and exhibited, with a great many of his works in private collections. He can truly be considered an international artist, always adhering to the advice given to him, when he was a student, by Pablo Picasso, with whom he spent an afternoon on beach in Copenhagen, after he was lucky enough to be introduced to the master by friends, “Be true to yourself and always paint what you want to paint and how you want to paint it”.