John Hawke’s work began in on site landscape painting.  Over time, the performative nature of the artist in public space, combined with the perceived failure of an optical approach in representing a landscape adequately led to a more conceptual landscape model, where spaces are seen not as constructed of colors but by a snarled knot of vectors of interest, with art having an unusually effective intervening capacity.

For the past seven years, in addition to his ongoing painting practice, he has made architecture and sign interventions in public space, employing the principles of 'productive confusion' in a sometimes collaborative body of work entitled Orange Work, which combines use of symbols of authority with novel forms and messages.

He completed undergraduate study at Colby College with studies in Classics, and received an MFA from Pratt Institute as well as an MS degree in Art History with a thesis on Robert Smithson’s environmental antagonism.  He participated in the Whitney Independent study program in 2006, is currently a participant in the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, Art and Law Residency Program.  

His work has been widely exhibited, presented and reviewed including in New York at Apex Art, the Abrons Art Center, Anthology Film Archives, Art in General, Creative Time, and Eyebeam, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, Chichester House in the UK, at the Susquehanna Museum of Art and most recently at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. 

 His work has been presented at the New Museum, PS.1, the New School’s Vera List Center, and the College Art Association, and reviewed in the New York Times, Flash Art, Architect’s Newspaper, the Radical History Review, the Brooklyn Rail, and rhizome.org.  His studio productions are represented by the Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles and by Pace Editions in New York.