JOHN W. HARDRICK

John Wesley Hardrick (1891 – 1968) was an American artist. He painted landscapes, still lifes and portraits.

Hardrick's grandfather, Shephard Hardrick, was a land-owning farmer in Kentucky who fled to Indianapolis with his family in 1871 due to activities of The Night Riders. He displayed a talent as a young man, learning to paint with watercolors at the age of eight without instruction.

As a young teen, he studied with Otto Stark at Manual High School. He entered drawings at the Indiana State Fair, winning several awards. At the age of nineteen, he entered fifty-three paintings and drawings, receiving eight awards which included several first prizes. This success allowed Hardrick to gain a formal art education after enrolling in 1910 in the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, studying there with William Forsyth until 1918. He worked several jobs to finance his education, including a foundry job and selling newspapers.

By 1917, Hardrick's local reputation was such that he and William Edouard Scott were featured in the Tenth Annual Exhibition of Works by Indiana Artists at the Herron School of Art, both men receiving critical praise. By 1924, he and Hale Woodruff shared a studio at 542½ Indiana Avenue. That same year Hardrick and Woodruff were among those featured at the Art Institute of Chicago's exhibition of African-American artists.

In 1927, Hardrick received a Bronze Award from the Harmon foundation for his painting, Portrait of a Young Girl. Beginning in 1928, Hardrick received grants from the Harmon Foundation for 5 years. His art was included in the Second Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Negro Art in San Diego, California in 1929. Also in 1929, his work was displayed at the Smithsonian Institution.
In 1933, during the Great Depression, Hardrick applied for a Civil Works Administration Public Works of Art Project program and was selected for the project planning committee. He also worked as a Works Progress Administration muralist in 1933–34.

Hardrick's works include certain holdings at the Indianapolis Museum of Art including: Little Brown Girl, created in 1927, which was purchased by Indianapolis African-American citizens and donated to the IMA in 1929, and re-acquired in 1993. Hardwick's art is also owned by the Indiana State Museum. These works were exhibited 1977 as part of the Woodruff, Hardrick, and Scott exhibition, all well known and respected Indiana based African-American artists.

When he died in 1968, he was a nationally recognized artist in spite of living his whole life in Indianapolis.