Portrait of John Foster by Ben Solowey, courtesy of The Studio of Ben Solowey, Bedminster, Pennsylvania

"My formal education was based on the assumption that nature is a springboard to style and effect, and that an audience could enjoy both the material and the organization of a painting. My first paintings were an attempt to fulfill these requirements,"

Newtown native John Foster first began painting as a child with his father, an amateur artist. Recognizing his son's ability, his father sent him to the Philadelphia Museum College of Art (now the University of the Arts). Following his graduation in 1930, he was employed as a cartoonist and later as a perspective draftsman for Brewster Aeronautical Corporation. After serving as a detachment artist in the Middle East during World War II, he returned to the Philadelphia Museum College of Art to teach. He was Director of the Freshman Program and later Professor of Drawing and Painting in the Department of Fine Arts.
Foster exhibited widely in Bucks County and the greater Philadelphia area. Some of his best known work depicted images of the streets and storefronts of Newtown broken into geometric patterns. He used the term neo-objective to describe his attempt to combine objectivity with surface design.