Rev. Johnnie Swearingen has been a long time favorite of Webb Gallery and we regard him as the most important of Texas Folk painters.    
Swearingen was from the Chappell Texas area of Texas.  He was born in 1908. He led a colorful life and as a grown man, left working the fields of Texas to hop the trains and hobo across the western US to the coast of California where he picked grapes and worked as a dock worker where he first saw sailors painting. He tried his hand at paintings with shoe polish on cardboard as his first medium. Around 1956, he got word that his Mother was ill and he returned to the Brenham area to care for her. After her passing, he felt called to study and receive his reverandship through the Lone Star Bible Correspondence Course out of Huntsville, Texas.
He picked back up the painting and documented his surroundings, his memories, and religious stories. He would tie his paintings to his front fence to encourage people to stop. He also would load them up in his truck and set up on the courthouse square. In 1961, Sigmund Byrd of the Houston Post wrote about him and his paintings and this brought years of interested Texans coming to visit him. He even rented a small studio for a few years near the railroad to add an air of professionalism to his business.
Swearingen was known for working with the local banker to fund his crops, then spend his time painting and neglecting his field. But he was savy and traded his work to cover his debts or get on the good side of the local new sheriff.
Johnnie had his next wave of popularity and his first public art exhibit other than his fence or truck in 1981 with “Eyes of Texas” an exhibit and catalog put together by Gaye Hall in Houston. Then in his work was prominent in two University of Texas exhibits curated by Lynne Adele - “Black History, Black Visions” in 1989 and “Spirited Journeys-Texas Self Taught Artists of the Twentieth Century” in 1992.
He later moved to Huntsville, Texas to be near his artist friend Andy Don Emmons. Andy and others cared for him as he had little family and he relished their love and blossomed in this small artist community towards the end of his life.
Rev. Johnnie Swearingen left this world in 1993.  We first met him in 1988 and we enamored and amazed at his talents and confidence in painting. We visited often up until the end of his life and treasured our visits and the paintings we purchased from him.
He painted a lifetime of memories and narratives unlike no other painter in Texas. He loved oil paints and was an artist by his own rule book, but he knew he had the gift.
Rev. Swearingen said,  "I painted to make people happy.  I love it.  It's a gift from God."