Biography

Jack Meanwell (1919-2005) became an artist of landscape and figurative work in styles ranging from totally abstract to realist. He has spent over 25 years as an instructor in the community education program at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and, while living in Cincinnati, has maintained a studio in an 1818 mansion called Elmwood Hall in Ludlow, Kentucky. He and his wife spend their summers in Canada.

Meanwell grew up in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit, and attended the Detroit Art Academy and the Society of Arts and Crafts. The Depression was raging, so he shifted his energies to commercial art at a technical school. During World War II, he was in the Royal Canadian Air Force and instructed ground crews about radar. In 1945, he joined Greenhow Art Studios, which handled the advertising for Ford and Chrysler, but he found that work boring and uncreative. Thus, he and his wife and son drove to Cincinnati, where Meanwell became half-owner with his father-in-law of Wallingford Coffee Company. That endeavor lasted until 1972, when he turned to full-time painting and the instructorship at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Jack Meanwell passed away in 2005, at the age of 86.