John William Vawter

John William "Will" Vawter was born in Boone County, West Virginia and raised in Greenfield, Indiana. While in Greenfield he developed a working relationship with poet James Whitcomb Riley and eventually illustrated eleven volumes of his poems. He also worked as a landscape artist. Vawter married Mary Vawter who was also a landscape artist and poet, although they divorced in 1923. By 1908 Vawter had moved permanently to Nashville, Indiana in order to join the Brown County Art Colony. Vawter worked in a loose and impressionistic style.