I could only guess what might be going on in such paintings, but two things I knew about Endewelt. The man could paint, with a subtle and dexterous touch that resulted in sure, crisp lines, but which could also yield creamy surfaces and textures. And I knew this talent had to be grounded in expert draftsmanship.
Marty Walsh knew it, too. She was volunteering at the CAC, receiving submissions for a juried show, when Endewelt presented a painting, and "I literally gasped." She later invited him to collaborate on a 2004 CAC show, Our Daily Bread, where I first saw those sumptuous Russell Stovers. Last year, Walsh opened her own gallery, Trifecta, in the Arts Factory, and when Endewelt died earlier this year, she offered to help his widow, Barbara Endewelt, organize his work and to stage an exhibition in August. Born in 1935 in Brooklyn, Jack Endewelt enrolled in the School of Visual Arts after a two-year stint in the army. He quickly became a successful illustrator, and in 1968, the SVA hired him to teach painting and illustration. He became chair of the Illustration and Cartooning department in 1987, a position he held until he left in 2000, to move to Las Vegas.
"Jack always wanted to see the West," says Barbara Endewelt, who lives in a Green Valley home filled with his paintings and drawings. She was an actress and singer in Manhattan and found her work drying up around the same time her husband started itching to move. "I think we were both getting tired of New York."
She remembers well the day they met in the Westend Avenue building in which each had an apartment, Endewelt in a pea coat and watch cap, trundling his portfolio. They were drawn to each other immediately, and married in 1970. They have a daughter and two grandchildren.
The Endewelts were in Las Vegas barely two years when Jack was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. It was said to be a manageable disease, but complications, including cancer, claimed him in January. Barbara Endewelt says he died peacefully at home. "In a way, he was able to come out here and devote all of his time to his painting. On the other hand, had we stayed in New York, he would have had a lot of friends to see him on his way," Barbara Endewelt says.
The spectacular view of the mountains from their home was among the last joys of a life devoted to visual delectation. Endewelt was a superb illustrator, with work published in Atlantic Monthly, Reader's Digest and Time-Life Books, and he won the Society of Illustrators Silver Medal in 1995. But he was no "mere" illustrator, in the sense of competence with nothing to say.
"I'm an inveterate illustrator who uses fine-art skills to communicate something more than ‘I love this object,'" Endewelt told American Artist magazine in 1991. "There's a whole world of forms, words and symbols that can be used to communicate to the viewers, and those are far more interesting to me than the purely abstract elements of a painting." For the Our Daily Bread show, he wrote: "We're conditioned to expect the things around us to behave, smell, taste a certain way, depending upon their appearance. I wanted to comment on the presumptive aspect of this expectation."
That is an artist talking there, one who understood the importance of examining objects in and out of context. The American Artist profile notes that the 1989 Andy Warhol retrospective "had a profound impact" on Endewelt. At the same time, he brought to that context exercise keen skills of observation and draftsmanship. He painted in oils and disdained acrylics because they dried too fast. But he could paint just as surely in watercolor, an exceedingly difficult medium to master.
"He was a wonderful, wonderful watercolor artist, and the faster he worked the better he was," says Barbara Endewelt.
And so while Endewelt was placing illustrations in leading publications, he was showing paintings in solo and group shows in top New York galleries, including Vorpal Gallery and Alan Stone Gallery.
Barbara Endewelt says her husband knew the skills he cherished were in decline in the art world. The New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman, reviewing an exhibition devoted to 19th-century drawing instruction, recently observed a shift from "dexterity and discipline to feelings and self-esteem," and "changes in modern art, which threw out the rule books of draftsmanship and proposed a new, free-thinking attitude."
Jack Endewelt kept the rule books, and made great art.