Counting his Blessings

Getting up in the middle of the night with an idea in his head, Jack Sorenson will make his way to his studio to write notes on how he could stage a particular scene for one of his paintings. "I have no trouble coming up with ideas, and I'm known as a storyteller," Sorenson said. "If a painting has a strong storyline in it, then people will relate to it and they will remember it." Pointing to one of his own paintings hanging on his living room wall, Sorenson told the story behind it. "It's of a cowboy trimming a tumbleweed," he said. "He's looking at a picture of a Christmas tree, and he's trying to kind of copy that shape. But think of all the things you have to say to tell that whole story. You have to show that it's almost Christmas, or otherwise, he wouldn't be doing that. You have to look out of the window and see that there are no trees outside, and that's why he has to use a tumbleweed. The problem is not coming up with ideas; the problem is encapsulating it into one scene that tells the whole story." Sorenson was 6 years old when he knew he was destined to be an artist. "When I was 5, my mom said I couldn't even write my name, but I would put our dog up on the couch and draw it. She said I would get mad if the dog ever jumped down before I was done. So when I was 6, my dad had a saddle shop, and he had a calendar that had a Charles Russell painting on it and I went up to it and pointed at it and said, "That's what I'm going to do." I knew it always; I didn't know you couldn't make a living in art. I didn't know people thought it was so hard to, but it's all I've ever wanted to do." Sorenson was born in Amarillo, but when he was 8, his parents bought a part of Palo Duro Canyon and they moved to the city of Canyon. Sorenson made money breaking horses while he was in high school. One day, he was riding a horse down a barrow ditch and a Cadillac stopped beside him. A man told Sorenson he was interested in having him model for him. Sorenson told the man he was not interested until he found out he would be paid $20 an hour to ride a horse back and forth for a while. So he modeled for Kenneth Wyatt, the well-known Tulia artist. Sorenson had a scholarship to the University of Colorado when he graduated from Canyon High School. "I went up to visit the campus, and they were doing collages and abstract stuff," he said. "That really wasn't anything I wanted to do, so I didn't use the scholarship. I made a list of every artist that I admired and instead of going to college, anytime one of the people on my list would teach a workshop or if I got to meet them, sometimes I would just call them out of the blue and I'd ask them if I could watch them paint or help them however I could. "As it ended up; I studied with every famous western artist that was on my list. A lot of them weren't famous then, but they're very famous now. In all, I've studied with 27 of those western artists, some for years at a time." Sorenson's mentor, Bruce Greene, analyzes his work. "Every painting I do, I have to go down to Clifton, Texas, and have him critique it," Sorenson said. "I've been studying with him for a little over four years. I'm at a higher level now, so I'm not learning how to mix paints or anything like that; he's teaching me more nuance things, not the nuts and bolts of painting. He's fine-tuning it for me." For about four years, Greene has made Sorenson take photographic references of everything that will be in one of his paintings. "Before, I would just think of something, sketch it and then get it more and more refined," Sorenson said. "But doing it this way does help." Sorenson averages one painting every nine days. Sometimes he gets so consumed by his work, he will paint for 10 hours straight without sitting down. "I paint in oils," he said. "I don't do any watercolor or pastel; I do charcoal drawings and oil paintings - that's all. I know exactly how many pieces I have, because I have to copyright them. I've done 2,004 paintings. I pinch myself still, and I've been doing this full-time for 35 years and some days I still think, 'I get to paint cowboys for a living.'" Sorenson said his ability to draw is a gift that comes straight from God. His wife of 34 years, Jean, said, "I don't think you can make it in any arts without profound faith." Jack added, "Every painting I do, I pray that it will touch somebody, and that's always been the prayer that I say." The Sorensons also are blessed with five children and six grandchildren, with one on the way. Jean was called to go to Germany because her granddaughter was going to have surgery. When she left, the 40- by 60-inch canvas Jack had was completely blank, and she was not able to see it complete until she came home. "The whole time I was gone, I had to hear Jack gripe about the size of the painting, because at that time he was doing the monotonous part of it and kept saying how much he hated the painting," Jean said. "Then he started doing the fine-tuning of the painting. That's when he kept telling me he couldn't wait for me to get home so I could see this painting, because it was the most beautiful painting he had ever done. He prayed for someone who would truly love to purchase it." At the time, that particular painting was the first one he had ever done that was worth more than $20,000, and he was nervous that it would sit the his gallery for a year and never get sold. Jack's prayer was answered, however, and someone fell in love with the painting. It sold the second day it was there. A man had walked past the painting as it was lighted from outside the gallery at 11:00 at night. He looked in at it, and he said it haunted him. He couldn't think of anything but the painting. Since then, the man and his wife have bought five more paintings from Sorenson. "We had a cowboy named Spider who was bedridden, and he would send Jack every cover of 'Western Horseman' he ever did," Jean said. "Through the years that he did this, he started manufacturing a story that he knew Jack and that they were friends." "He would tell his friends that he and I were cowboys together, but I had never met him," Jack said. "His wife would scold him in front of his friends, telling him that he didn't know me and that he shouldn't make up stories like that." "I found out through Jean's aunt that an elk attacked Spider at a wildlife preserve. It broke his hips, and he wasn't going to make it. He was in the hospital for a long time, and he wrote me requesting Christmas cards, so I sent him some new cards that hadn't been released yet." "We were taking Jean's aunt home, and I told Jean that I was going to go visit Spider and meet him finally. "But he had died the day before we got there, and I found out which funeral home he was at, and I was the first person to sign the guest book. That's one way God answered my prayer to touch people. I know I'm doing what God wants me to do, because he keeps reinforcing it with stuff like that." Sorenson never had any ambition to be a writer, but he had an idea for a book called "Growing Up Cowboy." "I approached my agent with the idea, and he told me to send him some images and he would send them to some publishers," Sorenson said. "I didn't expect anything to happen, but Harvest House, a publishing company in Eugene, Ore., was interested in it. But they wanted me to do another book first, and if I were to do this other book and if it sold a certain number of copies, then they would do the book I wanted to do. They told me the first book was "Everything I Know, I Learned from my Grandpa," and it's about a grandpa teaching his grandson everything about life. I was always closest to my grandpa of anybody on Earth. "So I just thought of stuff that he and I did when I was a kid and made 28 paintings for the book. The book was a hit, so then they did the one I wanted to do originally, and now I have two published books." "We just lost the man who played Grandpa in these books, George McSpadden," Jean said. "Jack said at his funeral that he was the assistant he never knew he wanted. Because he would follow behind Jack and kind of critique the paintings. He chose us as his friends, and we turned out being the blessed ones to have known him." "He had been a professional photographer at one point. His son is Wyatt McSpadden, and whenever Jack would have George model for him, George would kind of try to take over setting the scene and telling him how to light the shot." "He would call me and say, "Hey, I've got an idea for a great painting," Sorenson said. "And it was a Norman Rockwell painting that was hanging on the wall of his retirement home. I would say, 'George, I can't take ideas from other people, because if I do the same one, I'll get sued.' He thought they were original ideas, though." Jessica Murphy is the oldest of the five Sorenson children. "He's a real jokester," Murphy said. "I've never known Dad to let his fame or success go to his head. He's very down to earth, having the corniest, dare I say, crudest, sense of humor of any dad I know. There's also been an element of magic to having him for a dad. That's a little harder to explain, but he always kept the spark of imagination alive in our home. "He's like a big kid himself. I remember all of these wonderful family trips we took to the mountains. If a place was pretty enough to paint, we'd go there so Dad could take photographs and recreate the scenes later in his amazing artwork. "There are so many other qualities I could mention about Dad, but one thing that's impressed me since I was a kid is his deep, yet, quiet spirituality. If you don't know him well or don't take a close enough look, you'll probably miss that about him. That's what I like best about Dad; he handles his goodness the same way he's handled 36 years of success in the art world, with the typical aloofness of a cowboy." "I just want to keep doing what I'm doing," Sorenson said. "My goal when I started was to do 1,000 great paintings. I've done over 2,000 paintings, and I don't think there are 1,000 great ones in there, but if I can make it through my life and make 1,000 great paintings, that would be great. Each year, I would say five or six paintings are really above the rest. So I hope I can keep that level of paintings going for the rest of my life."

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