Folk Artist Jack Daw Makes ‘Low-Brow Linocuts for Poor People'

The term “Texas art” likely brings many classic styles to mind. Some may picture scenic Old West paintings of cowfolk or barn metal stars that adorn the front porch of any good Texas house. Others likely think of watercolor desert cacti or framed stills of the state’s famed longhorns. While all are great examples of prime Lone Star art, it wouldn’t be unfair to also say they’re a bit overdone.

Enter Jack Daw, whose “low-brow linocut” folk art embodies classic “old vibes” of traditional Texas folk art, but results in designs that are anything but. Daw frequents art markets across the state and has prints carried in several small Dallas shops. “If you don’t have a JackDaw, are you even from Fort Worth?” reads one of his booth signs.

Passersby who encounter his work across the area can usually expect eccentric examples of Daw’s folksy designs: Jesus blessing a Whataburger, a Jedi space cowboy, Ash Ketchum and Pikachu reimagined as Old Yeller. The black-and-white prints may not be the typical depiction of the Southern state, but Daw believes each one is as uniquely Texan as he is.

“I just love Texas — it’s such a massive, weird, diverse place,” Daw says. “Getting all over Texas and being influenced by all different parts of it while also being based here in Fort Worth makes the state really prevalent in my work. It just seems fitting to me.”

Daw, a longtime Fort Worthian originally from Houston, is as Texan as they come. He loves tacos, the Dallas Cowboys and day trippin’ in Texas. He’s usually seen sporting a bandana around his neck with the occasional cowboy hat and some variation of a Texas-themed T-shirt, ranging from the Texas Longhorns to Allsup’s. When he’s not posting on @jackdawfolkart on Instagram about his many lunch trips to the local Whataburger, he’s printing his designs on the chain’s paper bags. The proud father, chicken owner and Panther City local is serious about the rich Texas roots that bleed into his work, but is less serious about his identity as a professional artist.

Daw has been a Texan his whole life, but he hasn’t been an artist for nearly as long. Growing up, he drew pictures like any kid, but his “weird little church school” never had any art classes where he could develop his craft. He eventually stumbled across the process of linoleum cut while a student at Tarrant County College. After he received his associate degree, the art remained a side hobby; Daw used a financial aid check intended for classes at UT Arlington to get a new stand-up bass.

For a while, he played “pretty full-time” with the Fort Worth gothic country band Whiskey Folk Ramblers and a handful of other local groups. As Daw continued to strum his bass, he sold prints at local venues in the meantime, but didn’t pursue art “all too regularly,” he says, until 2012. A friend invited him to an art show he was setting up at Dallas’ Community Brewery, where Daw was surprised to see how many folks were buying his art.

“It really opened my eyes to the potential there,” Daw says. “[People] got my art, they liked it, and I figured out I just needed to go to enough places to pay the bills.”

Daw still occasionally plucks his bass with his newer Fort Worth band, Crooked Bones, but he’s found that drawing pictures at his dining room table is a much more flexible and profitable use of his time. His studio space stretches across his kitchen counter, dining room table and hallway, removing the need for a commute or putting on shoes — some of Daw’s favorite perks.

The at-home business also allows Daw to spend more time with his kids and craft whenever creativity strikes. His process usually starts by sifting through one of the “four or five hundred weird idea prompts” he’s typed out in the notes app of his phone. Once he finds a decipherable mysterious fragment of a sentence, he gets to work sketchin’, carvin’ and rollin’.

Daw could be a folk artist who draws out common images of mockingbirds, cowboy boots and bluebonnets, but he says the humor of it all is the source of his fun. As a self-labeled “class clown” influenced by little one-panel joke cartoons such as The Far Side, Daw would rather spend his time melding Texas Chain Saw Massacre with Whataburger or carving a range of Big Tex depictions than playing into cliches his skillset isn’t built for.

“There's so much cliche Texas art,” Daw says. “It’s a bull, a cowboy, a horse — it all sounds great, but it's been done to death and I don't think I'm technically a good enough artist to compete if I was trying to do the exact same thing as some of those. So I have to twist it off and just make up something silly out of it, I guess.”

Daw doesn’t consider his art to be professional — he doesn’t even call it “good.” He says part of the reason he puts “folk” in his artist handle is to lend some measure of laxity to how well the art is made. He’s not an artist looking to get pensive or awestruck looks from a crowd of onlookers in a museum. Rather, all Daw says he looks for is a couple of curious and confused glances, a small smile and a laugh.

“Even if they don’t buy anything, at least I made somebody laugh, and they can wander about their day,” Daw says. “It’s just a shared love of humor and the subject matter I’ve drawn from. I don’t think it’s high art in any sense, but it is something you can put on your wall and have as a conversation piece your friends can come over and look at and say, ‘Oh, this is cool art!’”

At the end of the day, Daw is a simple man with a simple vision. He doesn’t see himself or any of his work ending up in a gallery. He’s actually rather content staying in a tent in the parking lot of a bar. He’s happy to be a “man of the people” out there in the streets making that honest dollar.

For years, he’s kept his print prices at $25, and he doesn’t plan to change that anytime soon. Daw says he “knows how inflation works” and how “burgers used to cost a nickel,” but being a “curmudgeonly old punk rock dude,” he’s sick of everything going up and will sit on his $25 price point for as long as he can. After all, you can’t be a man of the people if the people can’t buy your art.

“There’s enough art out there for rich people, so somebody’s got to make art for the poor people,” Daw says. “I’m just one of the poor people just making art for my own kind.”