John Gurche is a paleontological artist known for the near-photographic realism and compositional drama in his scientific reconstructions of prehistoric life.
Gurche was a consultant on Jurassic Park and provided paintings for the 1989 dinosaur stamps for the U.S. Postal Service. His illustrations have been in numerous books and have been featured in magazines like National Geographic and Natural History Magazine. His work is in the American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian and the Field Museum, which houses the mural version of the t-rex image above, showing an interpretation of the famous t-rex find named “Sue” which is mounted at the Field.
His dinosaur images in particular showcase his ability to add realism to scenes of prehistoric life with his superb control of atmospheric effects and aerial perspective. He also has a knack for finding unusual positions and angles of view for his images.
Although his work covers many aspects of prehistoric life, his is most widely recognized by the general public for his dinosaur art, and is probably best known in the scientific community for his reconstructions of early humans and pre-human species.
He is currently involved in an 10 year ongoing project called “Lost Anatomies” for which he is illustrating many of the anatomical changes that have occurred to the human form over the course of our evolutionary history.
