From Canada, Jack Meanwell became an artist of landscape and figurative work in styles ranging from totally abstract to realist. He has spent over 25 years as an instructor in the community education program at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

Meanwell grew up in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit, and attended the Detroit Art Academy and the Society of Arts and Crafts. The Depression was raging, so he shifted his energies to commercial art at a technical school. During World War II, he was in the Royal Canadian Air Force and instructed ground crews about radar. In 1945, he joined Greenhow Art Studios, which handled the advertising for Ford and Chrysler, but he found that work boring and uncreative. So he and his wife and son drove to Cincinnati, where Meanwell became half-owner with his father-in-law of Wallingford Coffee Company. That endeavor lasted until 1972, when he turned to full-time painting and the instructorship at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.