JOHN DEMOTT 1954 - 0000 John DeMott, the son of a racehorse trainer, grew up on a ranch for thoroughbred racehorses in Southern California. Roy Rogers was a neighbor and John and his siblings often played with the Rogers’ kids. He began painting when he was about 10 years old, when his family gave him an artist kit. And, it wasn’t the Westerns so prevalent on TV in the sixties that caught young John’s attention, instead it was an instructional painting show that he remembers never missing.
“I went to all the major museums and galleries, took photos, looked at artifacts in museums, saw Indians on reservations,” he recalls. “It was an eye-opener to what I wanted to do, to where my heart really was,” he recalls. By the time he was in his early 30s DeMott had moved to Loveland, Colorado where today he works from a studio on his ranch, where he also keeps his collection of acoustic guitars. He describes his style as “Historical Realism,” a combination of Impressionism and Realism. His favorite period, and the one most often represented in his paintings, is the last half of the nineteenth century, featuring trappers, Indians, explorers, and Civil War soldiers more often than cowboys.
When DeMott was still a teenager he and his girlfriend made and sold metal sculptures that soon turned into a business with his brothers that grew into a large factory employing 150 people, producing wall hangings and table sculptures. However, with no formal training, and while still in his early 20s, DeMott sold the business to one of his brothers, moved to the mountains, built an art studio and began painting full-time. While he did enroll in some painting workshops, he says for the most part he developed his skills “the hard way, by trial, error, and experience.”
Typically working on several paintings at a time, DeMott’s method often involves months of research prior to beginning to paint. He employs Native American models and re-enactors to stage scenes using period costumes and accessories from his collection and horses from his own stable, taking photographs and making sketches he uses as references when he begins to paint. DeMott also seeks out direct experiences in the field by participating in old-style Western shootouts and visiting battlefields. “That part, traveling to landscapes and going into wilderness country and then staging a scene, is just as enjoyable as painting itself,” says DeMott. “For me, the process is a labor of love.”
At first his paintings were of wildlife and scenes from the Old West done in gouache, but he soon branched out, working in other media and historical Western subjects. By the time he was 24 years old his work began appearing in galleries in Arizona. For DeMott, the subject matter he focused on as an artist was cinched when he spent six months traveling the Rocky Mountain states in an RV with his wife and three children.
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