(1941 - ) Born in Arizona, John Farnsworth is a painter's painter. Prolific in both watercolor and oils, Farnsworth paints with a contemporary eye and traditional hand using a limited palette that he calls his Un-Limited Palette, consisting of just one of each of the primary colors in watercolor, with white added when working in oil. John Farnsworth has painted full-time since 1967. His works range from small pencil drawings to the twenty by thirty-foot mural Stage now in the collection of the City of Phoenix, Arizona. John's father was an engineer on the Santa Fe Railroad. His grandfather and uncles worked for the railroad and his maternal grandfather, step-father and father were loggers and sawmill workers. So, Farnsworth grew up in towns along the railroad, and in the logging camps of Northern Arizona. When John was nine years old, his mother and step-father took him to visit Taos, New Mexico. Farnsworth was captivated by Taos pueblo, and still remembers standing in one of Taos' galleries, watching two men discuss a painting on the wall. It suddenly occurred to him that one of the men was that painting. That the painting was him. That the man was an artist and that he was one too! It was at that moment that Farnworth became an artist. Following High School, Farnworth started checking out instructional painting books from the library, and teaching himself to paint. The only books the Flagstaff library had on painting at that time were those on Ted Kautzky, Rex Brandt and Charles M. Russell. Farnsworth also had some old Arizona Highways articles on Maynard Dixon and W.R. Leigh. Fundamentally, Farnsworth is a self-taught artist. He discovered that he was in love with learning, a fact he had lost sight of in high school. It was the beginning of a lifetime of study. Farnsworth has studied the works and techniques of the masters and of the obscure, of the ancient and the contemporary. He has learned from them all; even, in some cases, by negative example. Farnsworth is interested in all schools of painting, and all periods. When Farnsworth returned to Flagstaff in 1962, he realized how much he had missed the Navajo and Hopi influence in his life. He decided to learn all he could about them. He worked for a short time at Northland Press, under founder Paul Weaver, where he met and worked with Clay Lockett and Don Perceval on A Navajo Sketchbook. In 1965, Farnsworth moved to Phoenix, where he ran a small, private museum and Indian shop, then, in 1965, he moved to the Navajo Reservation, to work for Clarence Wheeler in the trading post at Upper Greasewood, between Lukachukai and Tsaile. Back in Flagstaff in 1966, Farnsworth began working as Preparator at the Museum of Northern Arizona, under Barton Wright, the Kachina expert. Farnsworth teamed up with Earl Carpenter, an excellent landscape painter from Sedona, who had gone full-time a couple of years previously. He was wanting to paint Indians and Reservation scenes, and to learn all he could from someone who was managing to support himself with his art. The two camped and painted all over "Indian Country," and Earl persuaded Farnsworth to try oils. They went out every time Farnsworth could get a day or more off. At work, Farnsworth was spending more time on his sketches than on museum business. Ned Danson, the Museum Director, took him aside one day and said, "Your mind really isn't on your work here, is it?" "No, sir, " Farnsworth answered."You'd really rather be painting, wouldn't you?" "Yes, Sir.""Then go paint, Danson said, "And if you stick with it, I think you might be great someday."