John Fulton "Jack" Folinsbee (March 14, 1892 – May 10, 1972) was an American landscape, marine and portrait painter, and a member of the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania.

[1]: 24  Beginning at age nine, he attended children's classes at the Art Students' League of Buffalo, but received his first formal training with the landscape painter Jonas Lie in 1907.

[2]: 27  Folinsbee contracted polio at age 14, which rendered his legs useless, weakened his right arm, and left him permanently reliant on a wheelchair.

[1] Early in his career, Folinsbee painted in a tonalist style, with an interest in light and atmosphere that grew directly from his time with Harrison and Carlson in Woodstock.

The paintings that resulted from this trip, and those that followed later in the decade, reflect a deep understanding of Cézanne's compositional strategies and a desire to reveal the underlying structure of forms.

Folinsbee's exploration of structure led eventually to an analytical, highly individual expressionist style in which he painted for the remainder of his career.

[2]: 72  To paint a large work, he would lean a canvas against the studio wall and sit on the floor before it, his withered legs tucked under him.

[1]: 18  Relying on notes made on the spot about color and light, he would edit the scene as he painted, emphasizing or eliminating elements to enhance the overall mood.

[2]: 95  Edward Beatty Rowan, assistant chief of the Public Buildings Administration's Section of Painting and Sculpture, offered him a commission for a post office mural in Freeland, Pennsylvania.

[1]: 109  With the prize money, Folinsbee bought a 25-foot motorized Hampton dory (flat-bottomed open boat) that he named "Sketch" and equipped as a floating studio.

"[16] In Modern American Painting (1940), Peyton Boswell, Jr. placed him among the "Lyricists"—"the moody ones, dreamers and mystics," who "work sometimes in pattern, but more often in terms of light, shadow and chiaroscuro.

[a] He exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts most years from 1915 to 1952, and was awarded the 1931 Jessie Sesnan Medal (for Canal and River).

Kirsten M. Jensen, senior curator at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, is the author of Folinsbee Considered (2014), a scholarly biography and catalogue raisonné.

The Michener Museum maintains an online version of the catalogue raisonné, which is updated as additional Folinsbee works are identified.