Join Visual Arts Alliance for a lecture by Clare Elliott on the subject of Forrest Bess, a Gulf Coast abstract artist.

A unique figure in the history of American art, Forrest Bess (1911-1977) lived an isolated existence in a fishing camp on the Gulf Coast. He painted visions that he saw in dream states, creating an abstract vocabulary that was mysterious, even to him, and he developed idiosyncratic theories about his work. “Forrest Bess: Painter-Fisherman” explores Bess’s curious and compelling abstractions and the letters that he wrote explaining how they relate to his theories of symbology and hermaphroditism.

Clare Elliott is Associate Research Curator at the Menil Collection, Houston. In 2013 she curated “Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible,” the first retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work in more than twenty years. Elliott received her M.A. in the history of art from Williams College in Massachusetts.