For more than five decades, John Padgett lived and breathed the dynamic ambience of Los Angeles, capturing its essence in works of art across various mediums. Alongside contemporaries Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston, he challenged conventions of formalism, elevating realism and photorealism to an advanced art form. Padgett gave a voice to the beauty and narrative resonance of the odd, discarded, and overlooked in LA’s rapidly transforming cityscape and expressed it through a unique and unmistakable lens.

The Garage Art Society, named by John in the mid-1990s, was a reference to his artistic home. His garage became a repository for discarded flotsam he collected and the studio where his alchemy transmuted it into works of art.