John Wesley Hardrick – 'Through the Eyes of an Artist' at The Indiana State Museum

A Thousand Words on John Wesley Hardrick.

 

John Wesley Hardrick at Indiana State Museum

Interesting works by John Wesley Hardrick have popped up at auction in Indianapolis over the past several years. Knowing little about the artist I was happy to come across notice of his Indiana State Museum exhibit shortly before its end June 29.  

The show's  arrangement is both beautiful and thoughtful. Paintings, both large and small, grouped in a way to tell the story of Hardrick's long life in dedication to his art.  Its title promises a showcase of the vision of the artist. It actually delivers so much more. Not only the amazing sights captured in his paintings, but also an insightful revelation of his person. 

John Wesley Hardrick "Through the Eyes of an Artist"
Indiana State Museum, left to right - Thou Good and Faithful Servant 1930, Portrait of Irvena Harvey Ming 1929, Going Fishing c. 1940s, Hay Wagon on the Farm 1935, and Hale Woodruff's 1960s Unknown Title landscape

 

Innovative Eyes, Virtuoso Touch.

We see in his landscapes that Hardrick developed his own vocabulary for color. For me, it's as if he saw the world, not color blind or predefined by tradition, but color enhanced, as if pulsating with some magical lifeblood.  His palette seems to includes hues not only on our own visible spectrum, but maybe infrared or ultraviolet too.  The dark brown of his exposed board support (he rarely paints on canvas in the show), the deep navy blue of the shadow of trees and foliage. His areas of brightest light are green – a neon in the trees, caused by the mixing those dark blue shadows and yellow he used as highlights. It dazzles, its mixing, as if charged by electricity. Overhead, his clouds with patches of sea green, caused, again by his melding the same colors, but diluted with white, more subdued, less charged, more ethereal like the sky. 

detail Hay Wagon on the Farm, John Wesley Hardrick

By varying the tone of these colors from foreground to deepest distance, his enlivens his landscapes with tangible depth.  Follow your eyes, you can walk right into them.  

And the path is often clear. It's right down the middle. For Hardrick also has a signature preference in landscape composition that deviates noticeably from the classic golden ratio seen in tradition. At least in many of his paintings in this show. Like a stage play before our eyes, his scene is flanked and curtained in a balance on either side, with an action that opens in the center. It engages like a soft subliminal vortex, to draw the eye in. 

This is demonstrated by comparing the famous John Constable painting, The Hay Wain, 1821, which uses the classic golden rules methods to meander the view from side to side and front to back across its image. You see Constable's wagon at first glance, but are quickly drawn away down the road and along the stream, back and forth, in a zigzag to the depths of the painting. This traditional composition is also seen in the late landscape painted by Hale Woodruff, (Title Unknown), c. 1960s that hangs in Hardwick's show.  Woodruff's cottages in the lower left draw you into a bright center, that pulls back toward a bright pink, and finally back again to a golden distance.  

Woodruff, most known for his late 1930s Amistad murals in the Talladega College library, shared space with Hardrick and they advertised art lessons when their paths crossed in Indianapolis back in the late '20s. 

Hardrick's Hay Wagon on the Farm, 1935, parts a sea of trees like Moses to reveal a hay wagon and worker, not to grab at attention, but as a main event. You bask in its central scene. The yellow glow of noonday hay, a horse whose only respite is its own cast shadow. The hardworking man and his pitchfork has no shelter from the sun. The American Scene, the regionalist ethos of dignity, labor and the common man, but with Hardrick's unique romantic touch and perspective.

Hay Wagon on the Farm, John Wesley Hardrick

Additional landscapes in the show have this centralized composition as well, such as Winter River and Cabins with a sapphire creek ripping a glacial crevasse through the center of the picture. And Salt Lick Creek, in which the endless days of summer seem to live in youthful splendor beyond the red autumnal leaves at each side. In the center, as if to reiterate the impression, not a hint of leaves changing color are reflected on the eternal river's sheen.  

Winter River and Cabins, John Wesley Hardrick

 Blue Lagoon, 1935, again, has a systematic up/down, left/right balance that leads to the exact center of the picture. The shade ends there, as does the mere reflection of sky upon the water. A sun dazzled beach at the end of the lagoon. There is something sublime, something Caspar David Friedrich, about being placed at the epicenter of numinous beauty. 

Similarly, in (Title Unknown) Waterfall with Figures, an immense, powerful waterfall dominates the center of the picture, craggy rocks shore at the sides. A tiny group of figures are so infinitesimal in the composition, they are nearly lost in the  spectacle of water.  Effortless, casual strokes sketch in three anatomically precise people, amazing in their two-tone simplicity. The artist's secure feel for his brush is evident in his brushwork. And while your eyes are honed in, look up the river. There is nothing smaller than infinitesimal except for the second group of figures way down the way. Impeccably painted. See, people gather, then they gather again, in groups of three, visual echos, in a Mandelbrot journey up the river of life. Or maybe just a great fishing spot Hardrick happened upon. But it's hard to imagine catching anything with a current running so fast. Other than what Hardrick caught in his untitled painting– a tour de force of a view.  

detail (Title Unknown) Waterfall with Figures, John Wesley Hardrick

Handshakes, Hugs, and a Heart for Heavy Lifting.

The portraits, the people pictures by Hardwick in the exhibit show not only a variety of sitters and situations, but also serve as insightful snapshots of aspects of the artist himself. The show's curator has accomplished a wonderful narrative in the placement of the paintings. 

We see in them, the ever story of Hardrick's love of family and community, his faith, even pastimes he enjoyed. And the broad societal milieu that opened up to him as a gifted artist, that likely would have remained out of reach to a taxi cab driver, which he was as well at times, to put food on the table. 

Hardrick was not your everyday cabbie, though.  In a world of interesting people and wondrous sights, he was an artist-injected one. Sketchbook with him, equipped and ready to transcend the daily grind, and capture quick portraits of passengers or landscape motifs that caught his attention along the way between fares.

We see in Indianapolis Street Scene such a sight.  As if caught from his taxi cab glance in the middle of a downtown intersection, a honey-dipped scene mesmerizing in its golden wind. Three people again – Hardrick sees a group of three.  A trinity of windblown saints just trying to a cross the street. The inexplicable epiphany of artists,  marvelous to behold.

detail Indianapolis Street Scene, John Wesley Hardrick

Hardwick's portrait of his neice Trili, 1942, shows a girl, pretty in a fancy pink dress and bow, painted  with the swift and sure handling we see in his floral subjects in the show. The puffy bow, her frilly skirt could be peony flowers at full bloom. To paint flowers best be swift and sure, they fade quickly, just as sure as the girl will blossom into a young lady in the blink of an eye. 

Such a woman is revealed in the stunning, society-type painting Portrait of a Young Lady.  The painting's sophisticated composition of extended side-view of body, but with head looking over the shoulder at the viewer, is a bit Egyptian. It recalls in my mind the unfinished painting by Jacques-Louis David, begun in 1800, of a young lady I remembered as Josephine Bonaparte, but was actually a Madame Récamier. Cascading fabric of beautiful gowns, a long bare arm on each lady extended to the knee. Elegant bare neck and an allure of indifference in the eyes. Hardrick's sitter is unnamed, but perhaps someone with recall something in some visual memory somewhere that will rediscover who she is. Until then, she is the blossom of a debutante, a quinceanera, of girl to young lady, universally.

detail Trili, John Wesley Hardrick

Outward Reaching Hands.

In 1927, Hardrick's painting Little Brown Girl won the second prize in in the fine arts category in a competition sponsored by the William E. Harmon Foundation, noted in its support of  African-American arts. It delights with the colorful exuberance of Matisse or Derain. 

Little Brown Girl, John Wesley Hardrick

The award winning painting was a source of pride and joy for Hardrick's Indianapolis faith-based and artistic communities and they united efforts to fund the purchase of the picture and its eventual donation in 1929 to the John Herron Art Institute (now the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields). 

Almost 100 years later, belated, this show.

And a current artist, Mason Archie, who follows in the footstep of those before, as we all do, every step.  His The Road Less Traveled #12, 2020, has Hardrick's gleaming golden road, but not in a city center, but a country landscape of a type loved by both men. It's not golden by a rule of composition, but it's golden in the glow of the sun on its bare rutted dirt.  The tired tracks of tires or wagon wheels, or just people walking side by side.  The golden sunset, or is it dawn, of an artist on the road.

Mark Diekhoff, June 2025