Utah-based figure painter John Darley loves painting people of the American West. Through sheer hard work, dedication, and love for his family, he’s created a career as an artist that he’s determined to master.
Mr. Darley’s work has won awards of excellence from the Portrait Society of America, the Art Renewal Center, Southwest Art magazine, and the NTD International Figure Painting Competition, the latter of which recently awarded him a bronze award for his oil painting “Vivian.”
Hoping to inspire the next generation of artists, Mr. Darley teaches a weekly portrait class at his studio and weekly portrait and figure drawing classes at Utah Valley University.
Family, Art, and the American West
Mr. Darley’s family roots run deep in the American West. In the 1800s, just before the Civil War, his ancestors emigrated from Denmark and England, walked across America to this “little mountainous valley with an inhospitable salt lake,” and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, he explained in a telephone interview. Although he was born in Boston, he’s spent most of his life in Utah and now lives with his family in American Fork.
Creativity runs in Mr. Darley’s family; his mother paints, and his grandfather is a musician. Growing up, when his family fell on hard times while trying to save for a home, he remembers seeking solace in creative adventures—something that he, as a little boy, could control. “I could create my own world,” he explained. Through his art, he'd dip into fantastical worlds and creative adventures. Drawing influences from illustrators such as imaginative realist Michael Whelan, he made dragons and spaceships come to life.
When developing his art in high school, Mr. Darley began to seek out masters.
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Michelangelo greatly influenced him. “He made giants. He created buildings. He fortified the walls of Florence. He painted the Sistine Chapel. I don’t know how he did it [all]; It’s unbelievably inspiring to me,” he said.
He particularly admires Michelangelo’s “almost superhuman” work ethic, and can’t think of any artist who made his designs a reality to the extent that Michelangelo did.
Another master Mr. Darley admires is 19th-century French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau. He finds Bouguereau’s prolific output and technical proficiency remarkable, especially how he painted with a set system and understood concepts well.
“His process was very clear, and it’s very inspiring to me and motivating for me to dial into my process and have a clear end in mind every time I start painting,” he said.
Becoming a Professional Figure Painter
Mr. Darley made a few detours on the way to becoming a professional artist. He toyed with the idea of joining the military. However, his girlfriend and now wife, Cassandra, wasn’t keen on his being away for long stretches of time. He began studying accounting at college, although he hated it.He saw that many artists struggled to make a living wage from their art. While at college, he decided to investigate more. He sought out successful artists who were making beautiful art and money, and found Jeff Hein working in Salt Lake City doing just that. When he asked Mr. Hein what the key to making a living from art was, he answered, “It’s really simple: You just have to be good.”
Mr. Hein advised Mr. Darley to drop out of college, work incredibly hard as his apprentice, and then maybe he’d have a chance. However, when the North Dakota oil boom happened, Mr. Darley saw an opportunity to work the oil fields and provide for Cassandra, whom he knew he wanted to marry. He joined the hundreds of thousands who flocked to the oil rush to make their fortunes. “It was a Wild West in every sense of the word,” he said.
Cassandra eventually worked there, too, as the camp cook, and it was there in the middle of nowhere that they decided their future. Cassandra gave him her blessing to pursue a career in painting, starting with an apprenticeship with Mr. Hein.
Returning to Utah, they married. The money they'd made on the oil fields funded his four-year apprenticeship. Through his apprenticeship, he felt that he’d improved, producing some good still-life paintings and solidifying his understanding of color, but he wanted to develop his figure drawing more. He said that he saw “painters in New York making incredible, unbelievable figure drawings,” so they decided to move to New York City so that he could study classical drawing at the Grand Central Atelier.
Mr. Darley was 27 years old at the time, and he and his wife wanted to start a family in the next couple of years. “There’s this belief among people in my age group [his early 30s] or even younger, where family and kids are looked at as a liability,” he said. He believes that a lot of people overlook what parenthood does for them: “It makes you grow and obligates you to grow and be better than you might otherwise be, because that love is extraordinarily powerful and makes you do things you probably couldn’t do otherwise.”
The prospect of fatherhood propelled Mr. Darley in his studies.
“There was an urgency to move and make [myself] better, to figure out how to do good work, and to do it in a way that was compelling,” he said.
During the year he studied in New York, he kept a grueling schedule. “I think you’re obligated to throw your entire self at it, because it’s very short in the grand scheme of things."
For six days a week, he'd wake up at 6:30 a.m., get to the Grand Atelier studio around 8:30 a.m., and paint until 10 p.m., taking only a half-hour break for lunch and an hour for dinner.
In his spare time, he studied life drawing at The Art Students League of New York and worked on still-life paintings in the evening at the studio or his apartment. “It was so intense that weird stuff happened to my body: My hands would go numb, and my face would go numb because I was so eager to get better.”
At the Grand Central Atelier, he mainly learned classical figure drawing, which has formed the foundation for every piece of artwork he’s done since. He counts Utah native Gregory Mortenson chief among the atelier teachers who inspired him. Mr. Mortenson slowed Mr. Darley’s painting process so that he could dissect what he was doing and ultimately challenge himself further.
Mr. Darley studied around 11,000 hours—just over five years of working a 9-to-5 office job—before he made any real money. He encourages aspiring artists to learn as long as they can and strive to be the best that they can be. “Once you get your career going, it’s hard to dip back in with the same amount of focus.”
After students figure out the foundational concepts of art and really understand them, Mr. Darley believes that’s when artists can be inventive and add their own style. A master, such as Bouguereau, acts as an exemplar for this approach. “He could just replicate things time and time again so well,” he said.
Generational Commissions
Soon after they returned to Utah, his wife announced she was pregnant. Mr. Darley felt a “jolt of horror and extreme excitement” when he heard the news. He’d have to put all his hard work to the test and make a living for his new family. He needn’t have worried. Half an hour after his wife told him their good news, he got an email for a $30,000 commission. A month or two later, he got offered a commission for $20,000. “That was enough money to keep my household operating and keep me from jumping out of the profession [after] getting scared because of the demands of life,” he said.If that hadn’t happened, he’s not sure he’d still be painting. “I got incredibly lucky or blessed and I’m really grateful for it.”
Mr. Darley is incredibly grateful for each commission. “It’s those individuals who want to throw some investment money at making tomorrow’s work happen that keep my career moving,” he said. Early on in his career, his church commissioned a work that helped him get established. Private commissions, especially portraits, are the bread and butter of his business.
For his portrait paintings, he aims to show the essence of the person, not just his or her surface appearance. Before he starts preparatory sketches, he asks questions to better understand the sitter. He also asks the person’s close family and friends how they view the person, as he feels that they sometimes give a more honest opinion than the subject.
Mr. Darley gains an incredible amount of understanding by observing his subjects, whether objects or people. In his award-winning portrait “Vivian,” he watched the 7-year-old at play and asked her parents and siblings about their experiences of her. In Vivian, he saw hope along with a nobility and strength that he couldn’t wait to express in paint.
“There’s a powerful skill in being able to just visually discern your world and others’.”
The hope he saw in Vivian symbolizes more. “You can’t have children and not have hope for the future. It’s hard to do,” he said.
For those who have seen Mr. Darley’s portrait of “Vivian,” they may not be aware that she’s part of a family portrait of the Gillries. He observed all five family members, sketching them at the same time but forming each portrait one by one.
Mr. Darley paints some of his portraits in egg tempera, a harsher medium to work with than oil paints since it dries so quickly. His egg tempera portraits, such as “Our Son Jack,” show the layered brushstrokes, which he uses to his advantage to accent facial features.
In the next decade, Mr. Darley hopes to concentrate on more multifigure paintings, which he hopes will be public commissions or publicly displayed. He loves some of the 20 paintings in “The Slav Epic'' painting cycle by Czech painter Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939). On his easel right now is a privately commissioned 14-figure work.
“I plan for these paintings, at least when it comes to the portrait work, to be generational relics, something that’s passed down from family to family.”
To find our more about John Darley’s art, visit JohnDarley.com
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