About the Cover Artist: John Fawcett

Jul 6

Three cowboys rode up to the café in Hahns Peak Village late one afternoon in the 1990s and shouted across the road to the waiter, inquiring whether the chicken dinner special was available that night. When she said yes, they hitched their horses to a post and came in to eat.

Western artist John Fawcett and his wife, Elizabeth, happened to be sitting outdoors at the café, having just walked land they had recently purchased and envisioning the day they could build on it. “It was just so cool. I knew right then this was going to be home,” John recalls.

The Fawcetts realized their vision in 1996, when they began spending their summers in North Routt County. They trailer their horses each spring from their farm in southeast Pennsylvania to their Colorado ranch.

It was in North Routt that John first met Steamboat icon Ray Heid, a winter Olympian and rancher, whose family owns Del’s Triangle 3 Ranch. John arranged to meet Ray early one morning when Ray was wrangling horses, and that event was the catalyst for “Triangle Three Roundup,” (oil, 20x16) featured on the cover of this edition of the Yampa Valley Arts & Culture Guide. John created the piece in 2015 for his retrospective exhibit at Steamboat Art Museum. It is one of several of John’s pieces that feature Ray and his horses.

The details in “Triangle Three Roundup” are so authentic that the viewer can taste the dust being stirred up by the horses’ hooves and feel the early morning chill in the air. The fact that the horses’ movements and musculature are so real is not surprising. Before becoming a full-time artist, John was a veterinarian for more than two decades.

“I feel so very fortunate to have had two professions that I love,” John says.

When he left his practice in 1996 to become a full-time artist, one of his goals was to translate his connection with horses and dogs onto canvas. He has also created an impressive collection of work around the theme of Native Americans and their history. He enjoys doing the research that is required to accurately portray their lifestyle and history.

Widely recognized as one of the foremost painters of Western art in America today, John has shown his work for several years at the Autry Museum's Masters of the American West, where he won the watercolor award four times and the Gene Autry Memorial Award in 2023. He is represented locally by Wild Horse Gallery. New work by John is also being featured in Steamboat Art Museum’s ski season 2024-25 exhibit, “Art in Sport.”

For more information, visit www.johnfawcettstudio.com.