速
May/June 2011
For All Fine Art Collectors
Jim Norton
Maza Waken, oil, 52˝ by 40 “Maza Waken was the name the Sioux gave the gun. They believed it was a very mystical item and that it had great power. The Plains Indians had some guns, but obtaining ammunition was very difficult, so they preferred the bow and arrow for hunting and war. In the 1800s, an Indian could shoot 12 arrows in 60 seconds, while a gun could only be shot once and then had to be reloaded.”
ART of the WEST • May/June 2011
When Fall Turns to Gold, oil, 36˝ by 48˝ “This is a quiet scene by a brook in autumn. Two Indians are sitting by the stream, taking in the quiet.”
A S u c c e ss f u l G a m b l e By Vicki Stavig
“I
think the Lord gives you talent, but you have to sacrifice. You have to pay your dues.” So says Jim Norton, who did indeed pay his dues as he followed his dream of becoming an artist. He studied, he painted when he was dog tired after working a full-time job to support his growing family and, with the support of his wife Pam, he gambled on his talent taking him where he wanted to go.
That gamble, combined with talent and a lot of hard work, paid off. In fact, it paid off in ways Norton would not have dared to consider, not the least of which was an invitation to become a member of the prestigious Cowboy Artists of America (CAA). Add to that the many awards he has earned over the years and the fact that his Western paintings are much sought after by collectors, and Norton would be the first to tell you
that life couldn’t get much better. Born in Utah, Norton spent portions of his childhood there and in New Mexico and Wyoming. “Dad was in the mining profession, so wherever there was a better job, that’s where we went,” he says, adding that he spent his teen years in Wyoming, where he played sports, took art classes, and enjoyed pack trips with his friends to hunt and fish. He also had racing pigeons, a May/June 2011 • ART of the WEST
hobby he continues today. As an aside, Norton bemoans that fact that children today are too wrapped up in TV and video games to get outside and explore. “We never had a TV until I was about 8, and then we only got two channels, so there wasn’t much interest in it,” he says. “When I became a father, I would disconnect the TV cable in May for the summer and would tell the children it was broken, so they played outside.” When his children got older, however, they discovered that the problem was simply a loose cable and proudly told him so, never realizing what had actually occurred and the reason behind it. But back to Norton himself, along with his sports, hunting, and fishing, he painted wildlife. “In high school,” he says, “I copied Charlie Russell paintings for my mother. I would
ART of the WEST • May/June 2011
“You can’t play basketball unless you learn to shoot; you can’t paint, unless you paint from life.” take the figures out and put them in my own landscapes.” Following his high school graduation, Norton enrolled at Western Wyoming College, where he took classes in coaching—“because I was too small to play football or basketball”—and planned to minor in art. After just one semester, however, he left and headed to Australia, where he spent two years on a mission for his church. Returning to Wyoming, he met Pam, a local teacher, and the two married in 1975. The couple relocated to Utah, where Norton enrolled at Brigham
Young University and studied with Bill Whittaker, who had a major impact on the budding artist. Along with his classroom instruction, Norton was captivated by some of the small paintings by Frank Tenney Johnson at the college and says he once spent eight hours in front of one of those paintings, taking notes and studying the master’s style. After two years at Brigham Young, Norton left college behind. Whittaker had told him that if he wanted to paint, he should go paint. And that’s what he did, although the demands of heading a family also necessitated taking on a job that brought with it a steady income. Packing into the Line Camp, oil, 24˝ by 32˝ “An old timer is packing in salt and supplies to a line camp in the high country and stops to give his horses a cool sip of water.”
Horses and Men, oil, 36˝ by 40˝ “This painting was done in southwestern Wyoming. The cowboys are bringing in the remuda from the High Uinta Mountains to the home ranch.”
Photo By Dan Lund
“I was working for a food brokerage firm and would head home and paint,” he says. “I also would get up at 5 a.m. and paint before going to work.” Norton came to realize that, if he were ever going to have a shot at becoming a professional artist, he would have to devote more time to his painting. What did he do? He quit his job, went home, asked Pam to go for a walk with him, and confessed what he had done. “She said, ‘You need to get this out of your system; I’ll give you five years,’” Norton recalls. At the time the couple had one May/June 2011 • ART of the WEST
ART of the WEST • May/June 2011
Wary Utes, oil, 32˝ by 46˝ “On this occasion, the Utes are in enemy territory and always on the lookout for a sudden attack by the enemy as they are on the move.”
Opposite Page The Life Line, oil, 40˝ by 56˝ “The buffalo was the lifeline of the Plains tribes. They stored meat for the winter, used buffalo robes to keep themselves warm, and made lodges from the hides. Without the buffalo, the Plains Indians would have been gatherers. The buffalo sustained their way of life.” Quanah’s Return, oil, 36˝ by 48˝ “Quanah Parker was a son of Cynthia Parker, who was stolen by the Comanches when she was young. She was married to a chief of the Comanche tribe. When Quanah was in his teens, he and six other braves went deep into Mexico, raiding and plundering. Returning two years later, and bringing home more than 200 horses, they were welcomed as heroes. Quanah later became a war chief.”
son. The following year, they had their second son, who was born with Down syndrome, which resulted in what Norton describes as “huge medical bills because no insurance company would take us.” Needless to say, the pressure was on to help support his family, even though Pam had returned to work as a teacher. Norton would load his paintings into the car and drive from gallery to gallery, showing his work and hoping to sign on with at least one of them. “I also would take three or four paintings out and tell people how much I wanted for them,” he says. “One day I came home with no money and said, I’m going to have to get a job.’ The next morning, I had a phone call from Jim Sanders in Tucson. He said he had seen my work and was opening a gallery and bought a couple of paintings from me. He said, ‘I think you’re going to be good. Do some paintings, and I’ll buy them.’” It was just the vote of confidence Norton needed, and soon another gallery picked up his work. Things
were looking up. Then, in 1989, he got a call from the CAA inviting him to submit some of his paintings and be considered for membership in the group. No one was more surprised than Norton, when he was invited to join—and on his first attempt, no less. The following year, during his first showing with the group, the pressure of exhibiting his work with “the big boys” was more than a little nerve-wracking. “I was sick,” Norton recalls. “I had a headache and was throwing up because of the pressure. You’re standing in there with Ken Riley, Bill Owen, Jim Reynolds, and Howard Terpning. It’ll make you or break you, but I sold out. There has only been one year, maybe two, that I haven’t sold out.” He’s also earned many awards over the years, including the Stetson Award for best overall exhibition at last year’s show. Over the years, Norton has continued to study the works of artists he admires—including Tom Lovell and Robert Lougheed—and has visited and studied works in major May/June 2011 • ART of the WEST
museums throughout the country, as well as in Russia and Holland. He also is a voracious reader, particularly of books that detail life as it was in the Old West. In fact, he says, a friend recently gave him a book written in the late ‘20s or early ‘30s about a doctor who lived in Cody, Wyoming. “I’m going to do several paintings just from reading that book,” Norton says. “Those stories give me visual references.” Norton also heads to local ranches to set up scenes that he later will transfer to canvas. Such was the case with a buffalo painting that earned a gold medal at last year’s CAA Show. To compose the scene, Norton put two Native American rodeo cowboys in a huge corral with several buffalo. “They ran them for three hours while I took photos, did sketches, and wrote notes,” he says. “Charlie Russell could have just gone out and watched this; I can’t.” Although he paints in watercolor ART of the WEST • May/June 2011
—“a little, but just for myself”— Norton’s preferred medium is oil. “I dabbled in bronzes, but it’s hard enough to learn one medium,” he says. “Watercolor doesn’t forgive like oil. I think sometimes the public thinks you just sit in front of your easel and start drawing. Photography is only a stepping off point. The most important thing is painting from life. I’ve painted lots of horses and landscapes from life; that’s important. You can’t play basketball unless you learn to shoot; you can’t paint, unless you paint from life.” Accuracy is important to Norton as he sets out to recreate scenes of the past, but art, he says, is more than simply painting a picture. “I think each painting has its own thing you’re trying to convey. Sometimes I think you don’t need to tell the whole story; you leave it up to the viewer. If you took a cowboy and set him on top of a ridge, his leg hung
Grandmothers are Watching, oil, 36˝ by 48˝ “Grandmothers were an important part of any Plains tribe. The mother is preparing her daughter in her best dress and combing her hair to go to a women’s ceremony, where they will learn of their duties, taught to them by their grandmothers.”
over the saddle, it conveys something to someone.” Norton recalls receiving a telephone call from a man in New York, who had purchased one of his pack scene paintings. “There was no story there, but this guy said, ‘Every day I look at this painting before I go to work, and it’s the only thing that gets me through the day.’” That’s a powerful statement and a testament to the power of art. It also is a testament to Jim Norton’s talent.
Vicki Stavig is editor of Art of the West.