John Farnsworth entered this world at Williams, in Arizona's northern lumbering country, and grew up along the Coconino Plateau at the Grand Canyon, Ash Fork, Flagstaff, Winslow, and a little place with the jovial name of Happy Jack.

"When I look back over the last 20 years," he says, eyes alight at thoughts of his career as a painter, "I always thank Ned Danson, longtime director of Flagstaff's Museum of Northern Arizona. If he hadn't had the good sense to fire me, I don't know what I would've done."

Back in 1968, Farnsworth, then 27, worked for Danson as Preparator. "But I was listening to a little voice telling me to be an artist," he recalls. "

"Every chance I got, I'd be out on the Navajo Indian Reservation, painting. During the week, I glued myself to the museum's front desk, sketching. One day Danson approached me and in a fatherly tone said, 'You'd rather be out painting, wouldn't you"' I allowed as how he was right, and he fired me on the spot, saying, "Then go do it.'"

Farnsworth laughs. "That was the end of my career as a museum curator, the beginning of my life as a painter."

Thinking it would be good to escape the mainstream and teach himself to paint by trial and error, Farnsworth returned to a place he had worked before: Greasewood Trading Post on the Navajo reservation, south of Lukachukai and north of Canyon de Chelly. A three-month stay yielded some 20 paintings of Navajos, which Farnsworth took to Flagstaff and immediately sold. "I remained in Flagstaff another year," he says. "By then I had enough experience to make it."

Farnsworth's paintings -- commanding, richly representational visions -- present diverse subjects: cattle, horses, people, building, landscapes. He's a difficult person to fit into a category; just when you think you've got him pegged, he moves on. For example, the main terminal at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport houses Stage, a 22-by-27-foot, 30-panel Farnsworth mural commissioned by Wells Fargo and Company and donated to the City of Phoenix. The oil-on-linen painting depicts a Concord stagecoach, passengers, driver, the artist himself as guard riding shotgun, and a frothing horse (the rest of the team is out of view). Farnsworth spent practically all of 1982 creating that painting. It's so large he painted it along two walls of a warehouse and never was certain the pieces would fit together until the day before the unveiling at Sky Harbor.

Many people in his position would be laying plans for new murals, more oil paintings, perhaps even echoes of Stage But not Farnsworth.

Instead, still hearkening to that small voice, he's moving in another direction: watercolors. "Paintings of desert and forest, mountain scenes, buildings, paintings of anything," he says with the sociability that is practically a trademark. "It's like being set free,"

He ponders future prospects. "It might be interesting to paint along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Or do more work in Mexico or Italy. One day I'd like to paint the Navajos around Greasewood again. There's a whole world out there."

But what's it all about? Farnsworth smiles thoughtfully. "It's about doing an honest job," he answers, speaking for himself, Howard Post, Anne Coe, and so many other artists. "It's about caring for a painting. It's not really important that an artist be known. But for a painting to be known and loved" Well, that's like bringing new life into the world."

Maynard Dixon, the sage of painting the Southwest and its people, once tried to explain why he was an artist: "It is not an occupation; it is a way of life," he said. "With all its disadvantages... I would not exchange it for any I know. To re-create with paint on canvas the wonder and beauty that I extract from this amazing Western world of ours is for me enough."

The writer's notebook is closed. But memories endure, and indelible impressions linger: of the purposeful Howard Post, from the rolling range around Tucson; of Anne Coe, an impish bearer of serious message, influenced by a stark land; and of John Farnsworth, onetime denizen of the sky-reaching Coconino Plateau, today a lone rider along the fence lines of experience. Two sons and a daughter of the Southwest, and each an artist through whom we may experience many frontiers while celebrating creative energies as diverse as Arizona itself.

From: Three Artists of the New West   
ARIZONA HIGHWAYS MAGAZINE
July, 1989
by Ron McCoy

HOME • PAINTINGS • PHOTOGRAPHS

The contents of this website are ©John Farnsworth and are legally protected by United States (US Code Title 17, ch. 1, sec. 106) and International Copyright Laws, and may not be copied or used for reproduction in any manner without express written consent of the Copyright holder, John Farnsworth. Unauthorized duplication or usage of these images is prohibited by U.S. and International Copyright Law. In the event of infringement, the infringer will be charged triple the industry standard fee for usage, and/or prosecuted for Copyright Infringement in United States Federal Court, where they will be subject to a fine of US $100,000 One hundred thousand dollars) statutory damages as well as court costs and attorneys' fees. All items offered subject to prior sale. All rights reserved. 505.982.4561