John Wesley Hardrick was an American artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

. He painted landscapes, still lifes and portraits.
Hardrick's grandfather, Shephard Hardrick, was a land-owning farmer in Kentucky who fled to Indianapolis with his family in 1871 due to activities of The Night Riders

The Night Riders

The Night Riders were a vigilante group operating from about 1906 to 1908 in southwestern Kentucky and northwestern Tennessee that used fear and intimidation against the Duke tobacco monopoly in the area. The Night Riders were led by Dr. David Amoss, a medical doctor from the Cobb community in...

, a forerunner of the Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

. Hardrick's parents were Shephard Hardrick, Jr., and Georgia Etta West, who were married on October 10, 1888 and lived on South Prospect Street in Indianapolis, Indiana

Indianapolis, Indiana

Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...

.