Jack Swanson was never a “cowboy artist,” rather a real cowboy who happened to be a talented artist. For six decades he chronicled on canvas the western life and history he had lived in bright, vivid colors and exquisite detail.  Swanson’s works hang in hundreds of private collections as well as the C.M. Russell Museum, and the Cowboy Artists of America Museum.  It was an honor for him when President Ronald Reagan took one of his large vaquero paintings to the White House.   

Jack Neil Swanson was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1927.  His dad was a backwoods guide, his mother a successful ballerina. Moving often during the Depression, they arrived in California when Jack was four and it wasn’t long before he started drawing the cowboys and horses that he’d seen on the dirt roads on the way out West. At age 15, he was working on ranches in the oaks and grasslands of central California. At age 15, he was working on ranches in the oaks and grasslands of central California. He rode with vaqueros, Spanish horsemen who taught him well.  Swanson attended the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland under the G. I. Bill.  Feeling out of step with the art establishment there, Jack took to the trail with his quarter horse, Amigo, and made some money running match races. He rode into Carmel in 1949, and he and the horse shared a stall at Hodges stable near the Carmel Mission. He broke horses and worked as a farrier, but he still had an intense desire to paint. Jack learned from horsemen and artists, storytellers and whiskey drinkers. He enrolled in the Carmel Art Institute and met Sally Flint there. He gave her his prize horse, Maryanna, on their first date in 1950. Three months later they were married. In 1956, Jack and Sally moved two kids, two goats and a cage full of chickens to 10 acres in Cachagua Valley near Carmel. ‘It was like the Grapes of Wrath,’ he said. Together they built the Whiffle Tree Ranch, trading art for lumber, and pounding every nail themselves. Actor Jimmy Cagney already owned a painting of Jack’s and helped him dig a well. Their three children, Kristin, Wendy and later Nicolaus (aka Cash), were all on horseback before they could walk. For 64 years, Jack and Sally were together. And every year Jack’s loop got bigger. He traveled with a horse to ranches in eastern Oregon and to Nevada’s high desert ranges, and he cowboyed with the buckaroos. The legendary artist died at his Whiffle Tree Ranch in California, on Sept. 17, 2014.