Meet Chuck Becker

Oil Painter and Graphic Designer

Born 1942 on a farm near Tipton Kansas, I was always drawing farm animals and weather clouds as a child, during my high school years I took a home course in art from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, after submitting a drawing in the "Draw Me" contest I found in a magazine. A graduate of the Colorado Institute of Art, Denver Colorado in 1962. Worked as a Graphic Designer at the Hirschfeld Press, Denver until being drafted into the army in 1964, returned to work at Hirschfeld Press in 1967 after serving three years in the army. In 1969 I moved to San Francisco CA, worked for the James H. Barry Co. as a Graphic Designer and joined Columbia Graphics in 1971 as an Art Director in San Francisco. Married my wife Sandra in 1975 and moved to Rochester NY and worked for Bausch & Lomb for 23 Years as a graphic designer, while at Bausch & Lomb, I did a number of illustrations for the Company's Ray-Ban sunglasses catalog and promotions. Had several art shows at the Golden Lynx gallery in Honeye Falls New York. Moved to Hastings Nebraska in 1998, worked for Idea Bank Marketing Firm, retired in 2004, we moved to Cocoa Beach Florida for 7 months and onto Cookeville, TN in February of 2005, being retired I spend most of my time painting and free-lancing graphic design projects.

I'm presently First Vice President of the Cumberland Art Society in Cookeville Tennesssee and a member of the Upper Cumberland Arts Alliance.

Why I Paint

Portrait and Landscape Inspirations

Why I Paint? It's the desire to capture a mood that I may encounter while driving or walking along a particular area, the way the late afternoon sun is casting long shadows along the landscape, the colors of the landscape and sky as the sun is setting. The drama that is being played out in the sky, the storms highlighted in the distance. There is so much that is going on in nature which one doesn't notice unless you look for it and appreciate it.

I enjoy the act of painting, the mixing and placing of colors and values next to each other, the texture of paint strokes as it's laid on the canvas, how a suggested form is developed just by the different values of colors and the interplay of positive and negative space, and the way the edge of a paint stroke interacts with the canvas. Franz Kline, an abstract painter, does this so well, He is my favorite abstract artist. Howard Terpning and Frank McCarthy, western painters are both my favorite contemporary artists, their paintings of the west tell detailed stories.

81 Monticello Circle Cookeville, TN 36806
931-526-4567
cbgraphics@usa.com