Jon was born iin Kansas City, Missouri. to a Cherokee father and a Swedish mother. He moved to Tucson, Arizona from the Midwest when he was 8 years old. Here he attended grade school on the Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma and high school.

He later moved to New York, where he pursued his primary interest, theater and commercial art. He studied under modernist painter Lowell Nesbitt for three years, then traveled to Italy and began painting figures.

He studied art at Bennington College, the School of Visual Arts, the Art Students League, and Milan School of Fine and Applied Arts. After his early studies, Jon lived for twelve years in New York and London, where he worked in theater, dance, and modeling. With classical training in drawing, Jon continued to draw even while acting and dancing in stage productions, often sketching actors and stage tableux while waiting in the wings.

Jon returned to Tucson in 1971 and by 1974 he was devoting all of his time to painting, developing a personal style of painting which incorporated realistic Native American faces with abstracted backdrops and blanket designs. His interest in Native American themes also led him to Santa Fe, where his work was encouraged and widely collected. He continued to explore his interests in Mexico, living in San Miguel de Allende. He was featured in Art of the West and Southwest Art magazines.

Jon Lightfoot and his partner Joe (Joseph) Birdsong, also an artist (sculptor), live and work in Tucson, Arizona. Jon is the more well known of the two.