Jack N. Swanson1927 - 2014 Jack Swanson was never a “cowboy artist.” Rather, he was a real cowboy who also happened to be a talented artist. Swanson is considered the premier artist of the California vaquero and the horse and cow culture of the Pacific Slop region of the West. Realist and traditional painter and sculptor of the West, Jack Neil Swanson was born in Duluth, Minnesota on February 4, 1927, and raised in Carmel Valley, California. His dad Leonard was a backwoods guide, and his mother Margaret was a successful ballerina. Moving often during the Depression, they arrived in Oakland, California when Jack was four. “It wasn’t long before he started drawing the cowboys and horses that he’d seen on the dirt roads on our way out West,” his mother wrote. By age fourteen “JN” was already breaking horses. At 15 he was working on ranches in the oaks and grasslands of Central California and riding with vaqueros. These Spanish horsemen taught him well. His mentor was Frank Martinez, head “horse breaker” for the mighty Miller & Lux outfit in the lower San Joaquin. Jack’s time with this old vaquero at the Buttonwillow Horse Camp was, in Jack’s words, “unforgettable and priceless.” It was a magic time for the young cowboy, and he soaked up the experience like a sponge. As publisher of Range magazine and director of Range Conservation Foundation C.J. Hadley recalled of her friend, “Jack broke and shod horses from the Mojave Desert to the Tehachapis. He savored the freedom of the work.” When Jack left this ranch life and rode horseback across the state back to the Bay Area, he had already enlisted in the Navy. During World War II he served on hospital ships for two years. While attending the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland under the G. I. Bill, he “seemed to be not getting along with modern-type art teachers who didn't think horses were worth painting, but pots were.” He knew what he wanted out of art school, and he didn’t find it there, so he left and took to the trail again with his fleet-footed quarter horse Amigo. He made some money for a while running match races. But in 1949 when his “stud” pulled up lame, “Jack rode into Carmel and lived in a stall at Hodges Stable near the Carmel Mission.” Jack broke horses and worked as a farrier on the Monterey Peninsula, but “he still had an intense desire to paint,” Hadley explained. “He soon got to know Carmel icon Lloyd Tevis and his friend and Man Friday, Major Morgan. These two taught young Jack the pleasures of a well-told story, strong whiskey, and freshly baked bread.” Jack also learned from horsemen and artists, including Armin Hansen, John O’Shea, and a cadre of Early California painters who invited him to their studios and homes. Jack enrolled at the Carmel Art Institute. He also gained valuable instruction from National Academician watercolorist and Carmel Art Association Artist Member Donald Teague, who also favored Western themes. It was at the Carmel Art Institute that Jack met Sally Flint. On their first date in 1950 he proposed and gifted Sally his prize horse Maryanna to ensure a “yes.” Three months later they married. The couple soon became a part of the Carmel art scene, making lifelong friends with artists Steve Crouch, Eldon Dedini, Gus Ariola, Ann and Gene Baker, Frank and Betty O’Neal, Feg Murray, and many others. By 1956 Jack, Sally, and their first two of three children, two goats, and a cage full of chickens moved to ten acres the Swanson’s had bought in Cachagua in Carmel Valley. “It was like the Grapes of Wrath,” Jack described. Together the couple built Whiffle Tree Ranch, trading art for lumber, and pounding every nail themselves. Actor James Cagney already owned a painting of Jack’s and helped him dig a well. The couple began raising and training fine stock horses. All of their children—Kristin, Wendy, and Nicolaus—were on horseback before they could walk.“For 64 years, Jack and Sally were together. Jack’s reputation as an artist who depicted the vaqueros of the Pacific Slope grew. These oils reflect unerring realism because he painted from personal observation, with a sensitive eye that could catch and hold all the movements of horse and rider. After jurying into the Carmel Art Association, he once taught a workshop there called “Anatomy of the Horse in Action.” His studio at Whiffle Tree Ranch was surrounded by breaking corrals and arenas. It is the only artist studio known to have an indoor stall so that the artist could paint horses from life.Every year Jack’s painting loop grew wider as he traveled by horse and trailer to ranches in eastern Oregon, Nevada’s high desert ranges, and California’s oak-covered hills,” Hadley continued. “Everywhere he went, he cowboyed with the buckaroos.” Throughout six decades Jack chronicled on canvas the western life and history he had lived in bright, vivid colors and exquisite detail. In 2002, Swanson was named Westerner of the Year in honor of his defense of property rights and ranching. “Ranchers are environmentalists,” he said in his acceptance speech. “Their livelihood depends on their good care of the range. Their families are the type of honest and hardworking people that built America. Their roots are in the land, many for generations, and their land keeps improving under their care.” Whiffle Tree Ranch became a mecca for a wide variety of visitors, from tribal elders and cowboys to Hollywood stars and aspiring young artists. This legendary artist died there peacefully on September 17, 2014. His family, friends, and fans remember a man who was thoughtful, giving, and concerned about the plight of American ranchers and the issues they face. Swanson’s works hang in hundreds of private collections as well as the C.M. Russell Museum and the Cowboy Artists of America Museum. Swanson was one of the first members of the prestigious Cowboy Artists of America. His work was exhibited in major museums, the California Governor’s mansion, and Ronald Reagan’s White House. He is listed in Who's Who in American Art, and written up in both Ainsworth's book titled The Cowboy in Art and Peter Hassrick's book titled Western Painting Today. His bronze sculptures and oil paintings have appeared in many top Western magazines including Western Horseman, for which he created ten covers. Jack Swanson’s own book, The Life & Times of a Western Artist, was published in 2011. It is lauded as the “defining book on the vaquero life.” Lavishly illustrated with over 100 paintings, drawings and bronzes along with stories and personal photographs, this book can be purchased through Carmel Art Association’s gallery book table.