15 Facts About John Register

John Register was an American realist artist noted for his paintings and drawings, which were notably often minimalist, spare depictions of hotels, cafes, and empty chairs.

John Register studied painting for a semester at the Academie Julian in Paris, and later studied at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

In 1964 the two moved to New York, where John Register studied design and television at the Pratt Institute.

In 1972, just after his 33rd birthday, and unhappy with his work, John Register excused himself from an important client meeting saying he had a dental appointment.

John Register wrote a note to his boss and never returned.

John Register's interests included racing cars and ice-boats, photography, tennis, running, competitive chess, letter writing, reading, backpacking, fishing, and surfing.

John Register was born with a genetic kidney disease and suffered kidney failure 15 years before his death.

John Register received a kidney transplant from his sister in 1981 and, when that failed, received another transplant in 1985.

John Register lived instead for 18 months, battling cancer until his death in 1996 at the age of 57, in Malibu, California.

At the time, Register was survived by his wife, Catherine R Register, ; his mother, Dorothy Pratt Register Barrett of Hillsborough, California; his sister, Barbara Pratt Register of Rolling Hills, California; his half-brother, Eliot Steven Barrett of St Helena, California; and his three children, Peter Eliot Register, David Croft Register and Kathryn Sisson Register; and a grandson, John Sherman Register II.

John Register has six grandchildren who were born after his death: Emma Jayne Register, Samuel Henry Register, Finn Alexander Register, Noah John Hoffmann, Sophie Caitlin Register and Elisabeth Catherine Hoffmann.

John Register studied with the portrait painter Raymond Kinstler and landscape painter Lennart Anderson.

John Register had his first show in Los Angeles in 1975 and received the Francis J Greenburger Foundation Award from the Guggenheim Museum.

John Register has shown at the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, David Stuart Gallery in Los Angeles, the Earl McGrath Gallery in Santa Monica, and the Laguna Art Museum.

John Register's work was used, and credited, as the inspiration for the video for "Turn My Head" by the band Live in 1997.