Jackson Lee Nesbitt

Jackson Lee Nesbitt (June 16, 1913 – February 20, 2008) was an American artist. Nesbitt was born in McAlester, Oklahoma and studied at the Kansas City Art Institute off and on from 1933 to 1941, working primarily once famed Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton and printmaker John de Martelly. Though they were enormously different in age, Nesbitt and Benton were also associates who traveled and sketched together often—and the art they created was no question similar. When financial necessity (in large share caused by the popularity of modernist art) forced Nesbitt to renounce his art for a wealthy career in the advertising industry to meet the expense of for his family, Nesbitt did not talk with Benton for many years out of embarrassment. Nevertheless, Benton, and his wife Rita, always considered Nesbitt to be one of his finest students.
Artwork by Nesbitt appeared next door to fellow KCAI students James Duard Marshall and Gene Pyle in the 1937-1938 KCAI course catalog.