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Contents © 2000-2004 John Farnsworth
unless otherwise noted.
All items offered subject to prior sale.
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JOHN FARNSWORTH IS
REALLY COOKIN'
V MAGAZINE
OCTOBER, 1987
by Kathryn Coe
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Marilyn Szabo photo |
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In Scottsdale,
on a street with neat white houses and tall upright trees growing
lined-up straight along the sidewalk lives the artist, John Farnsworth.
The interviewer walks through the gate to the front door and rings...and
rings... and rings again. No answer. She scribbles angrily on a scrap of
paper, "Came for our interview, but you weren't home so I
left," thinking isn't it just like an artist to be unreliable? At
that moment a calm, smiling face appears around the gate next to the
door. It's John. "Are you looking for me?" he asks. "I
live here." |
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KC: |
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(Begins
the interview after apologizing for being late and for going to the wrong
address.) Where were you born? And where did you grow up? What were you
like as a kid? Did you want to be an artist when you grew up? |
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John: |
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I
was born in Williams, Arizona in 1941. We lived all over the
place. When I was a boy I wanted to be a fireman, a cowboy, an
Indian. When we lived in Flagstaff I read all the books in the Flagstaff
library. there were only three art books in the library. When
I started painting I thought that 16 x 20 inches was a big painting
because I had really only seen paintings in books. |
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KC: |
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Which Painter
influenced you most?
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John: |
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My
mother was born in Taos. When I was nine years old, we all went there on
a family trip. They kept losing me and asking, "Where's
Johnny?" I would wander off looking around. I remember being in a
gallery and the artist was there. I realized that the man I saw and the
artist who had painted the paintings in that gallery were the same
thing. I knew that I was the same thing. |
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KC: |
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Any other
influences?
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John: |
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One
of the things that influenced my art most was the book, Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance. I realized that art is all about
quality, if it is about anything. After I read it I started doing the
best paintings I've ever done. |
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KC: |
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What art do
you particularly admire?
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John: |
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A
few years ago, when I visited Europe I saw all the prehistoric art
caves. God, they were wonderful. I came back here and looked at my work
and asked myself, "What is all this dumb stuff?" This is not
what art is all about. My art has been too damn serious for too long.
Now I am enjoying myself. If my art turns out to be great, it's an
accident. |
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KC: |
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What do you do
for ideas?
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John: |
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You
can't invent inspiration, just like you can't invent adventure. You
can't even say 'Let's go out on the desert and have a flat tire."
Adventures, inspiration and flat tires have to sneak up on you. |
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KC: |
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How have you
chosen your particular subject matter -- the West, steers, cows, horses?
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John: |
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I've
got to have subject matter to keep me interested. I got into painting
cows when I decided to paint horses, race horses. I'd heard that horses
were hard to paint. I thought I would never get them right. It was the
hardest thing I have ever tried to do. I went to a stable on 7th Street.
I was going to photograph the stable horses. I ended up in the pen with
the steers. I said to myself, "I'm not going to paint cows!"
Next thing I knew I was painting cows. I painted one cow and they
started growing on me. I understood how there could be sacred cows in
India. |
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KC: |
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What are you
painting now?
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John: |
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Now
I am painting baroque horses (by this he means muscular, flowing maned
beauties with a triumphant Napoleon or the kings of Spain on their
backs). One painting takes me months of work because I put so much
detail into it. Once, I got a commission to paint a horse. I painted
that horse and got into a series that has lasted five years. Everybody
thought I was a cowboy artist. When I started this series of baroque
horses I said "My God, is this going to last five years, too?"
I'm beginning to do water
colors, too. Water color is a lot faster. Now, in water colors I'm
painting cows and pigs and things I saw in Mexico twenty years ago that
I wanted to paint. I have some little black and white photographs that I
took twenty years ago. I just got them out. They remind me of all the
things I wanted to paint at that time. The photographs are small, they
don't have enough detail for me to use them to do an oil painting. But
when you work in water color you can make up details as you go along; it
just comes out of the air.
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KC: |
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Why don't you
exhibit your paintings in a local gallery?
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John: |
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For
a long time it seemed like too much of a hassle. I could sell a painting
without a gallery and not have to give them 50 percent of what I sold it
for. Lately, though it seems like a lot of work to be a painter and do
your own promoting. It takes too much time. I've been thinking about
going with a local gallery. |
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As the sun
begins to set, the human's fancy turns towards food. John broils steak,
bakes beer bread and corn. We sit, drink iced tea and talk. |
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John: |
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When
I was married my wife didn't like to cook. we spent thousands of dollars
eating out. When we got divorced I started having more fun in the
kitchen than in the studio. I like to cook fried grease; my wife was a
health freak, she was always sick. My grandma use to make potatoes
boiled with milk, I loved it. My wife could never fix potatoes except
instant ones. One day, I cut up some potatoes and put them in water.
Twenty minutes later they were mushy. I invented mashed potatoes! It was
easy, too. finally, I was free from the tyranny of women and potatoes
that I had lived under all my life.
I like to cook. Another
day I put some tea bags in water. Usually I did that then ran upstairs
to put the jar on the deck. Then I had to run back and forth to see when
the tea was done. This time I forgot and left the jar on the counter in
the kitchen. When I went back to the kitchen the water in the jar looked
just like tea. I don't have sophisticated taste buds, but it tasted just
like tea, too. I invented moon tea. Incandescent bulb tea!
I like to make beer
bread. It's really easy. Just take one can of beer, three cups of
self-rising flour, two tablespoons of sugar and pop it in the oven. When
it's brown, it's ready.
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It's dark when
the interviewer leaves. The house is filled with the warm smells of
freshly baked beer bread and oil paint. The street of white houses is
quiet. A woman across the street stands at her gate and watches the
passing of cars and the falling of leaves. It has been a pleasant
evening. After several hours, the interviewer feels that the man who is
certainly one of the best painter in Arizona is also a good cook and a
kind, clever and humorous man. |
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SPACERBAR
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