Terry St. John, landscape painter and museum curator, dies at 86

Terry St. John was always driving around the East Bay in his paint-encrusted pickup truck looking for an interesting view. Maybe it would be an old barn on a hillside with good light and shadows, or a pile of lumber. When he found what he was looking for, he’d pull over, get his easel and oils out of the back and there he’d be — six days a week for a year and a half — painting through all the seasons and in all weather.

St. John — who was prone to peeling the paint off a canvas and starting over, eliminating months of work if he did not like what he saw — was a legendary plein air painter with work featured among the permanent collections of the de Young Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum of California, for which he served as associate curator of modern…