Jack King, a native of Pratt, Kansas, is a renowned artist, lecturer and art instructor who began his studies as a young man in East Moline, Illinois under the tutelage of Leon Eugene Wright, noted landscape artist and art educator.


After high school, Mr. King continued to pursue his artistic endeavors
while serving in the U.S. Navy. This culminated in a one-man exhibition in Key West, Florida in 1957. Upon his honorable discharge, Mr. King began his formal art education at El Camino College in Torrance, California. He then completed a Bachelors Degree in art, with honors, at California State University, Long Beach. In 1974, Mr. King received his Masters Degree in art, with a specialization in lithographic printmaking from California State University, Fullerton. His Masters show was the most highly attended student exhibit in the history of the university.
In addition to a distinguished career as an adjunct professor in the Fine Arts Department of El Camino College, Mr. King has exhibited his work professionally for over thirty-five years, participating in both one-man and group exhibitions. Mr. King is also a highly sought after and popular lecturer in art and design at educational institutions, as well as, private art and cultural organizations throughout Southern California.
When he is not occupied teaching or lecturing, Mr. King devotes the majority of his time to working in his studio.

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Jack King - Artist Statement

Since the time of my early youth, I have loved the art and the personal stories of the great Masters of the past. Part of my training, as a young student of the arts, was copying from those Masters in an attempt to train both my hand and eye, to somehow “see” what they saw, and learn from their discoveries. It was a way to gain a level of intimacy with my idols, to connect with their journeys as I was beginning my own.

Throughout the years of my career, I have on occasion, returned to those images of the past as a familiar safe-haven in times of uncertainty and doubt. Slowly I began to realize that my “copies” were beginning to acquire a life of their own, an independence both instantly familiar, yet somehow strangely unique. It was as if the images were finding their own individual motifs. Although artists for generations of time have paid tribute to their colleagues, I intended to create an entire body of homage art, not only as an expression of my reverence for past Masters, but to establish a unique collection to stand on its own merit as original, contemporary imagery based on a distant past. I became immersed in images spanning across five hundred years of art, produced by well known, and, in some cases, long forgotten Masters.

After twenty years the journey continues. I offer this work as a heart felt tribute to those before me who remain my true heroes. If the focus of my work seems rooted in the past, a nostalgic celebration of sorts, I make no apology. My works are not observations of pedestrian mediocrity, but a celebration of man’s humanity, his capacity for love, sentiment, passion and reflection. It is within this celebration that these works reside, not as a testament to man’s rage, but images to reflect his quiet, heroic capabilities.