Bart Forbes


Bart Forbes is an American painter and illustrator. He has worked for most of the popular magazines, amongst them TIME and Sports Illustrated, Ladies Home Journal, McCalls, Golf Digest, as well as a broad selection of corporate clients. His wide variety of works include postage stamps for the US Postal Service, Time Magazine's Man of the Year article on Jimmy Carter, paintings of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, theme paintings for the PGA tournaments and club houses and paintings of the Dallas Cowboys for Jerry Jones private jet. He was the recipient of the 1986 Sport Artist of the Year Award given annually by the American Sport Art Museum and Archives. The Sports Art of Bart Forbes, a collection of his most famous sports paintings, was published by Beckett in 1998. He was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2017, undoubtedly the highest honor bestowed on artists in the field of illustration.

Career

Bart Forbes is a gifted painter–illustrator who has gained great respect over a 55+ year period. He is well known for his loose painterly, yet realistic style of work which, in the 1970s–80s, were regularly reproduced to accompany stories for McCalls, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal and other popular women's magazines. At that time number of limited edition prints were published including the Male and Female Golfers, the Endangered Species series and images of Native Americans among others.

Sports Art

As Forbes' career progressed and the women's magazines adopted a smaller size format, most often without short stories, his focus shifted to the world of sport with commissions from Sports Illustrated, Time and The National Football League. In 1987 he was commissioned by the Korean Olympic Committee to be the KOC's official artist for the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Several of those images were reproduced in a series of limited editions prints as well.

Gallery Work and Fine Art

Over the years requests for large paintings necessitated that he change medium from water color to oil, but his style retained its original loose, washy quality which it still his trademark. In 2005 - 2007 TCP Sawgrass Golf Club in Ponte Vedra, FL. commissioned Forbes to do a number of mural-size paintings of legendary golf moments and players from the Players Championship Tournaments. He is currently experimenting with still life and landscape paintings, some of which are reproduced as Giclees.