Fascinated by the relationship between cowboys and animals, John Fawcett is a full-time artist who has gained wide recognition for his watercolor paintings. He is a graduate of Iowa State University veterinary school and was a practicing veterinarian for about twenty years before becoming a professional artist.

He has participated in the Mountain Oyster Club Show in Tucson, the Coors Western Art Show, and in 1996 received the Artists' Choice Award at the Buffalo Bill Art Show in Cody, Wyoming. His work has also been exhibited at the Gene Autry Show, Cheyenne Frontier Days Western Art Show, and the C.M. Russell and Settlers West Miniature Shows. Fawcett was selected for the Top 100 Artists for the Arts for the Parks exhibit, where he won the US Art Award of Merit in 1997.

In 2006, he did a painting of Barbero, the thoroughbred Kentucky Derby winner who fractured his right hind leg in the Preakness Stakes, which he had been a favorite to win. Owners Gretchen and Roy Jackson, highly impressed with the New Bolton Center's successful treatment of the horse at the University of Pennsylvania, hired Fawcett to do the portrait. However, Fawcett decided to contribute a second one as well, and these paintings as well as giclee prints of them will serve as a fund raiser for money for the Thoroughbred Charities of America for Thoroughbred rescue and rehabilitation.

Sources include:
Buffalo Bill Art Show & Sale, 2003
Vicki Stavig, "One on One", Art of the West, December 2006, p. 22

An artist working in watercolor and oil, John Fawcett has spent his life studying and gaining inspiration from his subjects. He began his study of the interactions between people and animals first as a practicing veterinarian for twenty years, and then as a full-time artist. He remains fascinated by the relationship between cowboys and animals.

Although he had been painting professionally since 1992, Fawcett was still a full-time veterinarian. However, in 1996 he changed his focus and became a full-time artist. He sold his veterinary practice in Pennsylvania, and he and his wife, Elizabeth, started construction on a log home and studio in northern Colorado where they now live with their dogs and Quarter Horses.

The change was a great success. As Nancy Ellis wrote in Art of the West magazine, "The continuing success of Fawcett's art career is nothing short of phenomenal. But it's soon apparent that this award winning watercolorist has achieved his current enviable status in the art world through old fashioned hard work and discipline."

Fawcett has participated in the Mountain Oyster Club Show in Tucson, the Coors Western Art Show, and in 1996 received the Artists' Choice Award at the Buffalo Bill Art Show in Cody, Wyoming. He was selected to take part in the Top 100 Arts for the Parks Contest for two years in a row, 1996 and 1997.

His work has been featured in Art of the West, Western Horseman and the Equine Image magazines. The combination of veterinarian and artist has given Fawcett's works a level of detail in which his first hand knowledge of horses and dogs is evident. His goal is to not only portray the interactions between animals and people; he always wants "to make the viewer smell the horse, hear the hoof beats, have all their senses be taken in by the painting."

Reference: John Fawcett publications