George Hallmark’s Life In Art
George Hallmark of Meridian is one of the most accomplished and awarded artists in America. “As an artist you first try to do something that you like and that you hope appeals to people,” he says. “I think a painting should be something that stops you, something you’d like to step into. You just make every painting the best you can.”
George grew up in Joshua, a small town near Cleburne. “We had no art in school. I was the class artist. Every class had one. There were only fifty of us that graduated together. For busy work, teachers let me draw. By the time I got into Junior High, the teachers would give me their tests. One side of the paper had questions; the other side had drawings. I did maps, parts of a flower or skeleton or whatever was going to be on the test. Well I’m no fool I looked at the questions, so I knew pretty well what the questions were going to be when the test was handed out the next day.”
His first formal training as an artist was when he enrolled in Tarrant County College. He took design courses that led him to do some architectural work. Even though he was poorly prepared, an architect asked George if he could do some delineation. “And of course the delineation shows what a building will look like when it’s finished. I asked the architect if I could take this home and work on it over the weekend. He said fine. So I went straight to the TCU bookstore and bought two books on architectural delineation, worked on it all weekend and taught myself how to do it. I took it to him and he told me that was exactly what he was looking for.”
George got a job with an architectural firm but did some art on the side. A collector saw some of George’s work and took him to a gallery in Dallas. After about an hour looking at the samples George prepared, the owner said he would like to handle George’s work. “I swallowed the hook. From then on that was what I wanted to do be: a fulltime artist.
“I asked around and found out who was the best oil painter and teacher. It was a man at a University in Utah. I spent three weeks watching him paint. When I asked him what was the cost he told me just to do some good work. Later, he was a judge in some events where my work was in competition with other artists. We remained friends a long time and when he passed away I got to say a few words at his funeral.”
George has always had encouragement in his quest to be an artist. A café owner in Cleburne knew George was a struggling artist and told him to just sign the check for his meals. The café owner never asked George to settle up. He has some of George’s paintings. So do several notable people.
George has spent a good amount of time in Mexico and that is reflected in his paintings. He is considering moving there and perhaps opening a shop in a hotel to sell his prints. His latest work is a painting of chili queens in San Antonio in the late 1800s. He calls it The Queens Court and it’s on display in San Antonio’s Briscoe Museum.