Jack Titus, MFA
Professor
Jackson Davis Titus was born in 1951 and grew up on a small ranch in Red River County, Texas, a land grant property settled by his 3-great grandfather in the 1830’s.
He received his B.F.A. in painting and printmaking from East Texas State University in 1975. During his undergraduate studies Titus worked for three years as a research assistant to widely acclaimed Texas artist Karl Umlauf. The two would remain close friends over the years and Titus would later refer to his time spent working in Umlauf’s studio as being formative and “essentially an old-school apprenticeship to a true master.”
Drawn to the raw energy of the “neo-surrealist” movement that had emerged from the Chicago art scene in the early 70s, Titus moved to Illinois in 1975 where he would eventually enroll in the MFA program at the University of Illinois. He continued to make frequent pilgrimages to the city before receiving his degree in 1980.
Titus was offered his first teaching position in 1981 at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas where he would remain for two years. Recognizing that he was ill-prepared to teach the Life Drawing classes he was assigned, he began for the first time since his undergraduate studies to make sketches from live models.
In the winter of 1983-84 Titus would spend four months traveling in Europe, much of this time spent in Italy. He now says it was this experience that cemented his interest in both portraiture and the nude.
Upon returning from Europe, Titus accepted a position at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he would teach for the next four years. Titus was again assigned to teach, among other subjects, all levels of life drawing classes. It was at this time that he immersed himself in his most strenuous academic study of human form. While in Grand Rapids Titus was also awarded an artist-in-residency at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art where he would maintain an open studio and share with other resident artists the responsibilities for curating exhibitions for the institute.
Titus joined the faculty of Oklahoma State University in 1988 where he was charged with expanding the Watercolor program and creating a Life Drawing program. During his time at OSU Titus also developed a travel program for his students and for 18 years conducted tours of museums, cathedrals and archaeological sites of major European cities. While on sabbatical leave in Barcelona in Spring of 2016 he began work on a body of paintings that would become his primary focus until his retirement from OSU in June of 2020.
Titus exhibited his work extensively for over 40 years in national and international competitive exhibitions, as well as group and one-person shows, and was the recipient of numerous honors and awards for his mixed-media watercolor paintings. He only rarely exhibited his work in Oklahoma outside of Oklahoma State University annual faculty exhibitions. In Fall 2023 a retrospective comprised of more than 60 of Titus’ paintings was exhibited at Oklahoma City University’s Nona Jean Hulsey Art Gallery. He continues to maintain an active studio schedule.