|
Do you need to adjust your
monitor?
Contents © 2000-2004 John Farnsworth
unless otherwise noted.
All items offered subject to prior sale.
| |
|
|
|
|
CITY LIFE
Phoenix Gazette
April 10 - 16, 1985 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Schreyer's
Arab, far left, Prado Rubens No. 1, at left. |
|
|
John Farnsworth
"When you paint
Rubens' horse, you tend to want to replicate it because it's already so
fantastic. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
John
Farnsworth is loath to talk about himself. The artist, 44, spends most
of his time on his painting, not on seek-and-destroy publicity missions. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
"There's all this desperation
in this business," he complained, "that I can hardly stand it.
I don't object to publicity, but it's not the main thing in my
life." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"I guess I think it's
unfortunate that paintings aren't like some basic necessity, like sheets
and pillow cases," Farnsworth continued. "It's a shame people
don't need art, because then you could just go about your business. It's
got a sort of correlation with movies -- There are just a handful of
actors and a whole lot of movie stars." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Principles are the only thing
standing in the way of Farnsworth and vast commercial success. A few
years ago, Farnsworth was painting small watercolors and selling them
for $500 -- until someone commented that he was giving them away. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"My response to that was just
to stop doing them," he said. "Besides, I get bogged
down."
You could do a lot of things just for the money, he commented, but what
would you have? |
|
|
| "You'd have a pile of dollars," he answered his
own question, "but they'd be so hollow. I guess I'm this foolish
romantic who thinks that someday, someone will actually look at a
painting and say, 'Something should be done with this.'"
People these days are actually looking at Farnsworth's
work and doing something about the dramatic new direction his paintings
are taking. His work is not in any Valley gallery -- basically because
he paints only six or eight paintings a year. He is, however,
represented by Jerre Barber wick through her company, Art Investment
Consultants.
And when Ms. Wick's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jerry D.
Barber, saw Farnsworth's latest paintings, they immediately bought them.
Both the works, Schreyer's Arab and Prado Rubens No. 1, hang prominently
in the Barbers' Paradise Valley home as part of their collection.
A native of Williams, Farnsworth knocked around for
years doing just about every type of work imaginable, although he knew
at age 9 that he was an artist -- not going to be one, he was
one.
He has been working on it ever since then, and finally
was fed up with being a truck driver, a dishwasher, a garbage collector,
or a draftsman, and made the jump feet-first into art as a full-time
occupation.
"I painted everything, just like everyone
else," Farnsworth explained, "but I painted Indians when I started
painting full time. It gave me a theme to work in, but I can paint
landscapes, animals, people."
"About the only people painting Indians when I
started were Brownell McGrew and Paul Dyck, and a couple of others, and
the first thing I knew, this bandwagon came thundering up from behind
and ran over me," he said with a chuckle.
For about 10 years, Farnsworth painted his Indian
subjects, every one he could find. Then, one day, he just stopped.
That was not the coolest move I could have made,"
he said. "I have only two of the old collectors or clients who
stayed with me since then."
What to paint now? Fortunately for Farnsworth and the
way things turned out later, a client who also was a horse owner
commissioned the artist for a portrait of his racehorse. |
| That first commission launched him into the world of
animals of all types -- most particularly horses and cows, although he
has done elephants and, most recently, a ram for the Phoenix Zoo.
The cow long has been an art subject, from the ancient
Sumerians, Indians, and Persians, right down to the Barbizon and
19th-century American artists and even to Andy Warhol. Farnsworth
tackled cattle and horses in a different way, a careful way, a way that
worked for him.
Now, this recent departure into animals from other
paintings -- the horse in Jacques-Louis David's portrait of Napoleon,
for example -- has him stymied. A series is planned around the two
paintings in the Jerry D. Barber collection, but Farnsworth is at a loss
about how to continue. |
| "I haven't resolved these conflicts,"
Farnsworth said. When you paint Rubens' horse, you tend to want to
replicate it because it's already so fantastic."
"I get lost in it," he continued.
"There's so many tangled ways to go about it. I love Uccello, but
they wouldn't work. They're bordering on being unbelievable already,
they're so carousel-like."
What Farnsworth is doing, basically, is taking
relatively small and minor sections of great (sometimes not-so-great)
works of art and recasting them with a technique that recalls the Dutch
and Flemish masters.
"I had all these problems," he explained.
"Would you do it like my technique or like theirs? How would you
set parameters? If I were Roy Lichtenstein, I'd do it in dots, like a
benday pattern. If I were Bill Schenck, I'd posterize it.
"It could be a painting of my imagined idea of the
horse that he painted or it could be a painting of his paint,"
Farnsworth convoluted. "I have to know well enough so I can defend
it all when it's finished."
As yet, the series is unnamed, but no matter. despite
the problems of resolution, Farnsworth is enjoying the work. these
horses of art legend, with silky manes flying and nostrils flaring, are
far more fun to paint than his tired, battered rodeo steeds of a few
years ago. He admits that.
"I can play with things that I can't do with regular
horses," he said.
Farnsworth pointed out that in David's portrait of
Napoleon, the horse goes ignored.
"You know," he said, "sometimes in a
movie I like the character actors better than the stars. Nobody gets to
see the horse in that painting -- because you're looking at Napoleon.
that horse needs to have a painting of its own."
Farnsworth, at the brink of this exciting new direction
in his work, is man enough and artist enough to give these once-painted
animals new life.
In addition to his latest work, he also has been
commissioned to paint a mural for the new library at Judson School. Farnsworth
may be reached through Jerre Barber Wick at 994-4137. |
| |
SPACERBAR
|
.