Painter, printmaker and teacher John Fenton was born in Mountaindale, New York. He moved with his family to Mount Vernon, New York, where he lived for some thirty years before settling permanently in Woodstock, New York. He attended The Art Student's League of New York and Atelier 17, Paris. His work was the focus of a number of one-man shows during the 1950s and 1960s, and was exhibited in numerous museums and galleries including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. And the Pennsylvania Academy.

Fenton taught at New York University and Goddard College. His distinctly surrealist work won awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Academy of Design, and numerous other institutions, and is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery among others. He died at Woodstock, New York.