John Crump grew up in Wellington, NZ. He showed an interest in drawing and painting at the early age of four. Encouraged by his parents, he pursued art as a school subject and later, after completing a year at a tertiary art school, went out into the world of commercial art. He soon realised that it was not the type of art that he wished to pursue as a career. Instead he chose to go through training college and into primary school teaching. Painting became a hobby during his teaching years but over a period, it became his first love and, encouraged by an award in a national art competition, he began his full-time career as a professional painter in 1972.

Over the 45 years since then, apart from occasional brief diversions into other work and a short period back in teaching, he has worked at the ever challenging task of improving his painting as he tries to interpret and express his love of the creation around us in his own individual way – particularly landscape, but also flowers and still life from time to time. Teaching groups of aspiring painters and creating teaching DVDs has been taking a good deal of his time recently too.

During the early years, he worked in his studio from sketches. However, he realised that his choice of subjects, colours, and designs were becoming repetitive and with encouragement from other painters he began working in the outdoors. 'Plein air' helps the painter to see the subtleties of colour and tone, the mood of the moment, and the variations of design ideas that can be seen on the spot. Now, John enjoys spending most of his time painting in the outdoors.

His paintings and written articles have been included in books and art magazines. His works have been bought by many private collectors around the world and presented to visiting dignitaries from overseas. He has held successful one-man exhibitions, and been involved in many group exhibitions. As well, he has taught adult students, art societies, and Polytechnic summer schools throughout New Zealand and more recently, in Australia and the USA.