JOHN PHELPS 1948 - 0000 Born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming, John Phelps showed an interest in art at an early age. His father, who was president of the Wyoming Wildlife Association, started taking him to meetings when he was just five years old. He was given cardboard and paints during the meetings to keep him entertained, and he’s been painting ever since.
In addition to painting and sculpting Western and wildlife subjects, in 2002 Phelps won a competition to sculpt a World War II Memorial of a soldier standing at a grave morning the loss of a fellow soldier for the Fremont County Veterans Memorial in Wyoming. Just before he shipped out with the Marine Corps in 2003, Phelps’ son, Chance, posed for the sculpture. Tragically, not long after modeling for that sculpture, Marine Corps Private, Chance Phelps was killed in Ramadi, Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Freedom in April 2004. The 2009 HBO movie, Taking Chance, starring Kevin Bacon, told the story of the return of Chance Phelps’ body to his hometown of Dubois, Wyoming for burial.
Phelps attended the University of Wyoming for a year majoring in pre-veterinarian studies. However, when he took a semester off to earn enough money to continue his education and received a draft notice, his destiny shifted toward becoming a different kind of vet. Rather than being drafted into the U.S. Army, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was sent to Vietnam to work with aviation ordinance. While in the Navy, Phelps was given permission to paint the walls of the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga he was serving on, and he remembers doing a trompe l'oeil painting on the wall of the engine room of a window looking out onto the Tetons.
Phelps has received commissions for a number of life-size military memorial sculptures, including: A War and Service Dog Memorial that stands in the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Park in Cody, and two examples of No Man Left Behind, a sculpture installed at Camp Pendleton and Camp Lejeune. Of those commissions Phelps said, “I express myself through my art and this monument is a labor of love for me. Love for not just my son but for my growing Marine Corps family.”
After his stint in the U.S. Navy, Phelps worked as a hunting guide for Elk and Bighorn Sheep and as a log coper, constructing log buildings. All the while he continued to paint the Western and wildlife subjects he knew from a lifetime of outdoor experiences, hunting, fishing, and cowboying. The hunters he guided sometimes commissioned paintings and occasionally he displayed a few paintings for sale on the walls of local establishments. When a friend advised him that he was undervaluing his paintings, Phelps added a zero to the price of a painting and was pleasantly surprised to find that the painting sold quickly. Before long he was working as a full-time artist. Phelps has lived and worked for the last 25 years in Cody, Wyoming.
When asked about his method of working Phelps says, “I paint, nap a little bit, then paint some more.”
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