This is the story of a boy who loved Christmas so much that he grew up and made it more magical for the rest of us.
That boy grew up to be an artist, and his name is Jack Sorenson. He spent his childhood on the edge of Palo Duro Canyon, a place with such an extraordinary quality of light that Jack’s unique talents must have been especially nurtured there.
Jack was drawing before he could remember. His mother told him that when he was three, he sat the dog on the couch so he could sketch it, and then became terribly upset when his canine model would not hold the pose. When he started first grade, he was so skilled at drawing everything he saw that his teacher called his mother and told her she thought he was a prodigy. His mother had never heard the word before and at first thought the teacher was saying he had misbehaved. Once she understood, she replied, “Oh yes, he can draw anything.”
He is a lifelong Texan. He lives in one of the “corners” of Texas, in Amarillo. He speaks slowly because of his Texas accent.
Jack, who was born in 1954, says, “I’ve always been able to draw, sketch, and paint anything I set my mind to. I didn’t discover it one day. I’ve always had it. God gave me a gift, and I try to honor it as best I can in every painting.”
It is no surprise that Jack is known for his Western scenes. When he was growing up, his father ran a Western-themed tourist town and dude ranch called Six Gun City on the edge of Palo Duro Canyon. As a young man, Jack performed there as a gunslinger and stagecoach driver.
He enjoyed drawing cowboys, but soon discovered that cowboys were not very interested in portraits of themselves or their girlfriends. He did learn, however, that if he could capture the personality or the beauty and strength of their horses, they would always buy the drawings. So he drew horses and sold them for $40 each.
As a result, Jack learned to draw horses with great precision and authenticity. Among connoisseurs of Western art, many say that no one can paint horses like Sorenson—at least no one living. According to Jack’s father, first there was Frederic Remington, then Charles Russell, and then Jack Sorenson.
Have you ever noticed that when a photograph is exceptional, people say it looks like a painting, and when a painting is exceptionally realistic, they say it looks like a photograph? Some of Jack’s paintings look very much like photographs. I asked him whether he ever paints from a photograph, and he replied, “No. A photograph lies to you.” If you try to paint a horse from a photograph, he said, your proportions will be wrong. The head, for example, will be too large in relation to the body.
“A camera can’t capture the truth of a horse,” he said, “but a painting can.”
Of his paintings, Jack says, “Every painting is a story in still form.” It is true. I enjoy reading the stories in his paintings. One, for example, shows a cowboy in the middle of bathing in a river. Something has just startled his horse, and our bathing cowboy looks alarmed as he watches the horse run off with his recently removed clothes flapping beneath the saddle.
One of Jack’s Christmas paintings tells the story of a cowboy on horseback arriving home late in the evening, perhaps on Christmas Eve. His daughter, about six years old, has been waiting for him, and as soon as she sees him arriving, she runs out of the house, down the steps, and onto the snow-covered road to greet her daddy. Behind her is a white wooden house decorated with icicles, lamplight glowing in the windows and smoke rising from the chimney. Behind Daddy’s back, his gloved hand holds a brown-haired doll that looks very much like his daughter. The excited little girl looks so happy to see her dad, but in a moment she will be even happier.
Jack loves Christmas. He says no one loves it as much as he does. When he was a boy, he always wanted to be the one to choose the Christmas tree. His father would send him down into Palo Duro Canyon to pick one out. He would cut down a large one and drag it back to the house behind his horse, often through the snow. This scene found its way into a painting, as did the scene of a boy balancing precariously on a saddle while trying to place a Christmas star on top of a snow-covered pine tree.
At some point, Jack began painting Western Santas. Santa on horseback, Santa riding down a snowdrift, Santa driving a stagecoach overflowing with toys. These Santa paintings became a hallmark of the Christmas cards produced by the Colorado-based Leanin' Tree company, which ranks Jack’s cards among its bestsellers.
His paintings have also appeared on the covers of numerous magazines. And if you want an original, Jack sells his oil paintings at the Joe Wade gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico—one of those places where, if you have to ask the price, you cannot afford it.
The first of Jack’s Christmas paintings that I saw made me think of him as a Western version of Norman Rockwell. His cowboys are depicted so lovingly against rugged winter backdrops; his Santas have slightly cherubic faces and sit on horseback with far more seasoned skill than any city Santa could manage. I love being surrounded by Sorenson’s work during the holidays. His paintings make me think of simpler times, when a doll in a blue dress, delivered on horseback on a snowy Christmas Eve, could be the greatest gift in the world.
Jack knew early in life, in fact while still a teenager, that he would spend his life as a painter. Now in his seventh decade, he feels he is still improving: “I’m in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, doing what God wants me to do. You can’t ask for more than that.”
