John Fawcett

1952 - 0000

John Fawcett was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. John grew up with a passion for horses, his family owned a few, and John’s first horse was a mare he named Copper. John’s other passion was drawing. “I started drawing at an early age,” says Fawcett. “I would just lose myself in drawing and learning about any kind of art.” But says Fawcett, “I was always really interested in art and my parents were very supportive, but I didn’t have any formal art training. All through high school, college and vet school, I did artwork for student newspapers and yearbooks, but I never considered art for a career.”

Pursuing instead his interest in horses and animals in general, Fawcett attended the University of New Hampshire majoring in pre-veterinary medicine and earned his doctorate from Iowa State University in 1978. Following graduation, Fawcett received a job offer in Pennsylvania, where he interned and decided to stay. For the next eighteen months he worked both as an equine and small animal veterinarian. However, he says, “After a year and a half of working for someone else, I opened my own practice,” which over the next 20 years grew to include five veterinarians.

In 1991 Fawcett traveled to Tucson to see the Mountain Oyster Club’s annual Western art show, which changed his life. “I was enthralled by Western art,” says Fawcett. That experience caused him to seriously consider pursuing art as a career. “I had a burning desire to pursue art, but I was really having a hard time making a decision,” says Fawcett. For the next five years Fawcett says, “I was running my practice during the day and painting at night and on weekends.” Then, “One day I was talking to my stepfather, who was a physician, and he asked, ‘When you do art, do you think about veterinary medicine?’ I said no. Then he asked, ‘When you do surgery, do you think about art?’ I said, ‘Yes, all the time.’” Fawcett sold his veterinarian practice and devoted himself full-time to painting, first in watercolor and then later venturing into oil painting. The choice to focus his work on the Western genre was an obvious one for Fawcett. The training and experience as an equine veterinarian that has given him special insight into horse anatomy and his love of Western landscapes and vistas are both clearly evident in his paintings. “You paint what you know best and have a passion for,” he says, “and I was passionate about Western art.” “I like to make the viewer smell the horse, hear the hoof beats, and have all their senses taken in by the painting.”

Fawcett is unusual among Western artists with regard to the artists he says have influenced his style. “I like Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Anders Zorn and the narratives they evoke,” he says.

Today Fawcett and his wife divide their time between their horse farm in Pennsylvania and their ranch in Clark, Colorado. “In Colorado, the studio is in my home,” he says. “In Pennsylvania, my 1,800-square-foot studio is separate from the house in an Amish-built, timber-frame barn.”

WINTER’S JOURNEY Oil on Canvas 40 x 60 inches