By Megan Willome
Mark Haworth is an acclaimed landscape painter, known for his depictions of the Hill Country and Big Bend. So it’s a little ironic that he grew up in one of Texas’ most urban environments: Houston. But near his neighborhood he found spots of nature that laid the groundwork for the artist he would become.
“My favorite place was the big drainage ditch down the street,” Haworth said, recalling a memory from when he was seven years old. “I was laying on the bank of that bayou right after I got out of school for the summer, and this redwing blackbird flew right in front of me and landed on this cattail. It was high noon sun. It fascinated me that he wasn’t a black bird at all — his black was purples and blues and greens in an iridescent glow. Then he gave out that call, and this bright orange spot on his shoulder revealed itself. I immediately tried to capture that with crayons. Of course, I couldn’t.”
And so, an artist was born.
Haworth grew up attending art museums with his family, especially on vacation. His father was in advertising, and his mother was a concert pianist. He played a bit of piano, reluctantly, but preferred baseball and football. He also played bass clarinet in junior high band. And then the Beatles happened. That’s when he talked his father into buying him a bass guitar.
“Music was instrumental in helping me become an artist,” Haworth said. “That training has helped me to see the subtle nuances in landscape painting that I probably would not have seen without it.”
Although he planned to study music at Sam Houston State University, he ended up in printmaking and earned a BFA in 1977. He said the discipline of printmaking helped him learn to focus on design, color and texture.
“That helped me, especially painting the Hill Country, where everything is very textural, all sorts of briars and stickers and trees that are all gnarled and twisted,” he said.
While in college, Haworth met a girl whose father, Glen Bahm, was a portrait painter. Haworth became his apprentice, varnishing paintings, doing glazing and painting backgrounds — all the types of work that apprentices of old did when they trained with a master. It was during that three-year period that Haworth considered art as a profession.
“This was something in my soul I felt I could do,” he said.
For inspiration Haworth turned to the paintings of George Innes. He noticed how Innes painted light to convey emotion.
“That’s what struck me about landscape painting, the emotion of light. That’s what I try to get in my work,” he said.
Fredericksburg had been on Haworth’s radar for years before he moved here. He first drove through town on a road trip home from Colorado while he was still in high school. Then, during college, he visited Enchanted Rock with a geology class, which he was taking to better understand rock formations for his paintings.
“I’ve gotta live here someday,” he recalled saying to himself. “This is the place I want to paint.”
He moved to Fredericksburg in 1983 and has been a resident ever since.
Upon moving to town, he became involved with the Cowboy Artists of America in nearby Kerrville and took class-es, two with Howard Terpning. Haworth says many of those Western artists were originally employed as illustrators.
“Western art was the most ideal thing for them. They were used to describing a story, and Western art gave them that venue. They knew everything about painting, everything about color,” Haworth said.
said. “It wasn’t that I wanted to be a Western artist, but I knew he [Terpning] was from that illustration period.”
Haworth began painting the rolling hills and old rock houses around Fredericksburg, but he also began to explore Big Bend. The first time he stopped there was on a trip home from Los Angeles. He planned to stay for a day; he ended up staying for two weeks.
“I even had to go back down to Fort Stockton for supplies,” he said.
In October, Haworth will have a show of his Big Bend artwork at InSight Gallery. Following a one-man show there a year ago, his work became noticed by collectors from around the country.
InSight owner Elizabeth Harris said of Haworth, “He’s been part of the Fredericksburg art scene since before there was a scene.”
Haworth agrees. When he came, the entire art scene was Charles Beckendorf, John McClusky and himself.
Now, in addition to being represented by InSight, Haworth is also represented by Collectors Covey in Dallas. His work has been featured in several art magazines, including American Artist, Art of the West, Southwest Art and Western Art Collector. His style has an impressionistic feel to it although it’s more grounded.
“What I try to get in my work today is to evoke an emotion. I like to not try to spell everything out in detail, to give the viewer a chance to participate in the painting, he said. “When you do that it, it makes it more real.”
Learn more about Mark Haworth’s art at markhaworth.com.
Megan Willome is a freelance writer and author of “The Joy of Poetry.”