Forrest Bess

American painter

Forrest Clemenger Bess (October 5, 1911 – November 10, 1977) was an American painter and fisherman. He was discovered and promoted by the art dealer Betty Parsons. He is known for his abstract, symbol laden paintings based on what he called "visions."

Bess was born on October 5, 1911, in Bay City, Texas to Arnold "Butch" Bess, an oil field worker, and Minta Lee Bess. Bess first experienced the "visions" he would use later in his art as a young child. His first introduction to oil painting were works done by a neighbor, and at thirteen years old he began lessons in painting from another neighbor. During World War II, he enlisted in the Army Corps of Engineers and was given the task of designing camouflage. However, he was later moved to MacDill Air Force Base at Tampa, Florida, to teach bricklaying. He suffered a psychological breakdown, took a leave of absence, and then transferred to teaching painting at a convalescent hospital. He experienced visions or dreams, which he set down in his paintings. Bess's paintings are generally small and abstract. In 2013 and 2014, the museum retrospective "Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible" exhibited nearly 50 of his paintings and was curated by Clare Elliott, assistant curator of the Menil Collection. Today, Bess is regarded as a unique phenomenon, an artist who cannot be grouped with any one school, but who answered solely and completely to his own vivid, personal vision. His best art consists of only about 100 small paintings, many with simple driftwood frames that he built himself. The majority of these paintings are in private collections, although the Menil Collection, Houston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Phillips Collection in Washington, D. C., and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the City by the Sea Museum in Palacios, Texas have Bess paintings in their collections.