The following, submitted March 2005 by Sharlene Hall, is written by Tad Bickley, Best of the West Auctions. The source is Matthew Franklin, son of the artist.

John Franklin was born on Christmas day, 1925 in North Platte, Nebraska. After his father died when he was six years old, his mother moved the family to Glendale, California where he grew up. Franklin attended college at Glendale College until his college days were interrupted by enlisting in the Army for World War II.

After completing his Army days in 1946, Franklin began his first career as an Accounting and Finance manager in Phoenix. In 1966 after 20 years in the business world, his children gave him a paint set as a Fathers Day gift, giving rise to a all consuming passion for creating art that was to take his life in a totally new direction. By 1968 he was establishing himself as a credible artist. With the help of formal training at the San Diego Art Institute, and the critical eye of his mentor and friend, Burt Procter, he advanced quickly up the ladder of artistic prominence.

By the 1970's, John Franklin had attained national recognition with placement in galleries in Sonora, San Diego, Phoenix, Taos and others. In 1971 he moved to Taos, NM. By In 1974, Julie Nixon Eisenhower wrote a six page layout, which appeared in the "Saturday Evening Post" with a full-color page featuring one of his paintings, sharing the article with the likes of well-known Taos painters Eanger Couse and Oscar Berninghaus and with regionalist John Steuart Curry.

Franklin was a very prolific artist, selling over a thousand paintings in his active years. Franklin's success as an artist was not only validated by the buying public, but by his third career as art instructor at the Instituto Allende in Mexico.

His work is found in the permanent collection of the Harwood Museum in Taos.

Added note:
John Franklin died on February 20, 2010 in San Marcos, California.