EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 8 © 2014 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

33 I’ve been a fan of the works of American illustrator Bart Forbes since the mid-seventies. It has not been an easy task: I lived in London and he lived in Dallas. I stopped working in women’s magazines in the mid- sixties, so no longer enjoyed the privilege of free subscriptions to all the top American magazines. To see examples of his work I had to rely on friends in America sending me the odd tear sheet; The Society of Illustrators Annual, a yearly treat from New York City, and surreptitiously flicking through American magazines at the newsagents W. H. Smith. Step forward Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his creation of the World Wide Web; now the works of Bart Forbes are just a couple of clicks of the mouse away. Bart Forbes was born, and spent his youth, in rural Oklahoma. After graduating from the University of North Carolina he did a stint in the US Army, and then studied at the Art Center School in Los Angeles. I’m a couple of years older than Forbes, and in the fifties when we were growing up and in our early teens, the golden years of illustration were coming to an end. Television was taking a lion’s share of advertising budgets, leading to a reduction of advertising pages in magazines and newspapers, which in turn led to a reduction in the number of editorial pages. Moreover, there was a lessening of interest in romantic fiction, and art directors were increasingly using photography to illustrate editorial features and advertisements. In the late fifties and early sixties, most of the ABOVE: A watercolour portrait of Queen Victoria for insurance firm Cameron and Colby painted in 1983. LEFT: A watercolour theme painting for the Riverboat Hilton Hotel, 1985. Forbes design sense and command of his medium, enable him to sublimate detail without compromising content.