John Hardrick was born in Indianapolis to Shepard and Georgia Etta (West) Hardrick in 1891.  Displaying a talent for art as a young boy, his work was brought to the attention of the owner of a local art store and framer, Herman Lieber, who helped the boy enroll in children’s classes at the John Herron School of Art (interestingly, many of the frames one will find on his paintings today were made by Lieber and bear the label).

As a teenager, he began studying with important Hoosier Group impressionist painters, William Forsyth and Otto Stark.  He worked at a foundry at night to put himself through John Herron (he executed a well-known painting of this subject matter, illustrated in the catalog for the exhibition, A Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans (Hardrick, Scott, Woodruff, and Majors), IMA, Warkel and Taylor, p. 59).

In 1914, he married Georgia Ann Howard and held his first exhibition, which was a success.  He shared a studio on Indiana Avenue with Hale Woodruff for some of that year, but increased financial pressures caused him to stop painting and take a job in his family’s trucking business.

When he resumed painting, he exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1927.  One of his paintings, Little Brown Girl, was purchased by a group of supportive black citizens and donated to the Herron Art Institute for their permanent collection.  It is currently on display at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  He exhibited at the 2nd Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Negro Art in San Diego in 1928. The catalog read:

“In spite of acute poverty, this young man has the faculty of discerning beauty in everything, being able to face all his adversities with a smile that conceals the feeling within, at the same time he possesses a personality which strangely draws people to him.” 

He also exhibited at the Hoosier Salon in 1929, 1931, and 1934, which were then held in Chicago at Marshall Field and Company.  He won first prize for a portrait at the Indiana State Fair in 1934, and participated in the American Negro Exposition in Chicago, 1940.

The Civil Works Administration commissioned him to do a mural at the Crispus Attucks High School (Indianapolis) in 1934. Still, the principal rejected it because it depicted black foundry workers, not aspirational careers in medicine or law.

Hardrick’s health was declining by 1941, and he worked as a cab driver.  He would keep supplies in the trunk of his cab, and while waiting for fares, quickly paint local street scenes; later, he would also offer the paintings for sale from the trunk of his cab.   (REF: Tom Davis, research for the Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis)

Many of Hardrick’s portraits were of well-to-do black women who were not only married to successful men but who were, themselves, entrepreneurs.  (A Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans, Warkel and Taylor, p. 47).

Hardrick’s landscapes are derived from the many trips he took to Brown County, about fifty miles outside of Indianapolis.  He traveled to the area at the peak of the autumn season, when the leaves were at the height of their color; during the summer when the sun was bright and hot; and in the winter when the ground was covered with snow.  He did not sketch or paint during these visits. Instead, the artist took in the different scenes and committed them to memory.  (REF: A Shared Heritage, Art by Four African Americans , IMA, Warkel and Taylor, p. 41).

He applied his paint very thickly, using a palette knife to create a tactile surface, and relied only on a brush to blend or add a shape. He also used his thumb to mold the paint, as if he were shaping a sculpture. (Ibid, p. 41)

Hardrick worked quickly, beginning at the top of the canvas and working down.  He was more concerned with the atmosphere and expression of the landscape than with its descriptive qualities, thus following in the tradition of earlier African American landscape painters, such as Bannister and Duncanson.  His landscapes were romanticized versions of his memories of his visits to the country.  He blended his own paint when possible, and has a very distinctive palette