Today we’d like to introduce you to Jon Flaming.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jon. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I remember sitting in my Sunday school class at the age of 5 and watching the kid next to me draw a jet airplane. I desperately wanted to be able to draw a jet airplane as he did. So, for the past 51 years, I have been trying to draw a cool jet airplane. The son of musicians, I grew up in a home filled with music and creativity. My mom taught piano, and my dad was the music director in the small Texas churches we attended. Music has always been inspirational for me, and I often listen while working. – My dad was also a hobby wood worker. I saw him create lots of things from wood. My mom was a frugal creative, using whatever materials she could find to sew a dress, cook a meal or decorate a room. No doubt, I was influenced by what I saw growing up.
I remember as a second grader visiting our next door neighbors with my folks. They had a huge book on fine art sitting on the coffee table in their living room. As my parents visited, I carefully turned the large pages, seeing masterpiece after masterpiece of the greatest artists who ever lived. Incredible paintings by Rembrandt, Vasquez, Greco, Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse and many others fascinated me and stirred something inside. That something was a desire to create.
And, for the past 50 plus years, I have been creating in one form or another. Playing high school was a huge obsession too, but the thread of creativity was woven throughout all the other interests I had.
After high school, I went to Texas State University (formerly known as SWTSU) to study design, illustration & advertising. After graduating from college, I got a job with a prestigious design firm in Dallas called Sullivan Perkins. I worked there for eight years and in January 1993 started my own design studio. For the next 25 years, I created work for Neiman Marcus, American Airlines, FedEx, Sony, and many others. I was also painting during this time – usually in the late night hours after putting our kids to bed.
In 2016, I walked away from the world of design and decided to pursue fine art full-time. My pursuit of art while working my design studio paid off as I was able to gain representation by several reputable galleries in Texas. I also had many solo shows, and a number of museums started collecting my work. Last year, the John Wayne family called me after seeing the Modern Cowboy paintings and asked if they could license the images to promote the John Wayne brand. I’ve been working with the John Wayne family on this project and others for the past seven years.
Currently, I am working a on a series I created a couple of years ago called Modern Cowboy. It is a re-imagining of the western art genre that uses big, bold figures and colors to represent the working men and women of the west. The canvases are large to reflect the bigger than life image of the cowboy and the west.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The road has certainly lead been rough in spots, but the struggles have led to growth, and the growth has led to perseverance, and the perseverance has led to maturity & confidence in what I’m doing now as an artist. I think the biggest struggle for me over the years is the challenge of creating work that I’m really happy with. Coming up with a concept and then executing on it with excellence is always hard, but the reward is great when I’ve spent the time facing down the challenge and working through the problem to come up with a body of work that I love.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
I am an artist. I’ve had no formal art training, but I’ve been painting for about 30 years. My work has been described as Modern Folk Regionalism. My work focuses on Texas – the people and the places of the Lone Star state. – The working men and women of Texas are often the subjects of my work. My work is represented in Dallas by David Dike Fine Art. In Fort Worth, my job is represented by Artspace111. In Houston, I am represented by Foltz Fine Art. And in Hico, my work is at Blue Star.
My work is in the collections of the Tyler Museum of Art, The Grace Museum of Art in Abilene, and the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art. It is also in many private and corporate collections. The Museum of the Southwest is doing a solo show of my work in October of this year.
What were you like growing up?
I grew up in suburban Dallas. My childhood was pretty normal, for the most part. My dad was the music director, and my mom played the piano in the small churches we attended. My mom was also a piano teacher, so I grew up in a house filled with music, and music to this day continues to be an inspiration to me. I also loved sports. I started playing football in the 3rd grade and continued to play through my senior year at Richardson High School. I sang in the school and church choir and played drums in a rock band Art was always a thread that ran through everything I did. – I was constantly drawing and preferred art to other things like math and science. Oftentimes, I had a hard time focusing on my studies and would end up staring out the window and sketching what I saw. In elementary school, my friends would buy my drawings for a quarter.
Contact Info:
- Address: 319 Lawndale Drive
Richardson, Texas 75080 - Website: jonflaming.com
- Phone: 972.235.4880
- Email: jon@jonflaming.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonflaming
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonflaming
Image Credit:
Jon’s portrait by Stewart Cohen. All other images copyright Jon Flaming
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