Coming of age in Wyoming in the depression, Connie Schwiering made it the hard way. He got a start in painting from Robert Graham in Denver, was mentored briefly by Bert Phillips in Taos, then studied at the Art Students League in New York with Charles Chapman, a friend and contemporary of Frederick Remington. After the war, he and his wife settled in Jackson Hole where they lived for the next 11 years in a cramped travel trailer with a tacked on lean-to for Connie to paint in, before building a modest house and studio. He was well known and liked 
among local ranchers, painting in and around Jackson Hole as he slowly gained a following. Connie painted plein air extensively and on a substantial scale as shown in the accompanying photos. The genre of Western painting is underappreciated for its extensive contribution to the plein-air painting tradition in the United States. Conrad Schwiering is a stand-out from the lean years in the mid-20th Century.– Carl Judson
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