First Award in Water Color: 1953-23rd Annual Fall Exhibition, San Pedro Art Association Jury Commendation (1953) and First Award and Gold Medal of Honor for Water Color (1955): 2nd & 4th Annual Greater Long Beach Art Exhibition Jury Award Certificate and Blue Ribbon in Oil Painting: 1954-9th Annual National Madonna Festival, Los Angeles Jay Meuser (September 28, 1911 — August 19, 1963) was an American abstract expressionist painter.

[1] Besides teaching at the Art School of San Francisco, he had been a baseball pitcher, a vaudeville performer, a sailor working around the world twice, and "was more than a fair boxer.

Meuser painted many of the 20th century prominent personalities, including Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry S. Truman, Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

[4] He drew two sketches of General Douglas MacArthur in 1950; each accompanying editorials in the Long Beach Press Telegram.

[5][6] The latter sketch prompted an oil painting commissioned by a prominent businessman in the San Francisco Bay Area.

His award winning painting Occultation went on tour in the traveling section of the California Water Color Society's Annual Exhibition of 1962.