Chuck Forsman was born in Nampa, Idaho, in 1944 and received his BA and MFA degrees from the University of California at Davis. He is a decorated Vietnam Veteran and taught painting at the University of Colorado from 1971 until 2008. Mr. Forsman is credited with being one of the earliest painters to link landscape painting with environmental issues. He has had over 40 oneperson exhibitions. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Wichita Art Museum, Knoxville Museum of Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Yellowstone Art Museum, and the Whitney Gallery of Western Art at the Buffalo Bill Historic Center, among others. A three-time recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and three Faculty Fellowships from the University of Colorado, among other awards, Forsman’s work has toured such venerable institutions as the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
Chuck is represented by Robischon Gallery in Denver, Colorado and lives with his wife, Kristin Lewis in Boulder, CO. They have two daughters and a grandson.
Statement
Colorado artist Chuck Forsman has been continuously exploring environmental and political themes for nearly five decades, capturing national attention early on in his career. Forsman adeptly challenged art history’s pristine landscape ideal by including the signs of human encroachment and degradation in the form of highways, quarries and climactic cataclysms of flood, fire and drought. Known as a painter and expanding later to the camera lens, Forsman’s dedication to uncomfortable truthful topics has fueled his overall artistic vision and environmentalist stance. HIs often amplified, surrealist worlds belie a deep sensitivity toward landscapes that he has traveled far and wide in search of inspiration that invokes a clarion call to the fate of the Western landscape.
Whether it’s the landscape itself or the presence of an animal as witness, the compelling and poignant narratives told with lavish brushwork invite the viewer in for a closer look. Responsive to the demands of his sensitive and challenging subjects, Forsman’s undeniably accomplished compositions and paint-handling prevails. His uncommon palette, from rich or unexpected earthly hues with painted passages glowing in lavender or orange, enable the viewer to stand in the moment to simultaneously absorb the truth of loss while still taking in the heroic landscape that surrounds. Over the decades, it is this same generous quality and poetic connection found in all of Chuck Forsman’s work that has allowed the artist to endure and to stand today as a true voice for Nature in the West. (Robischon Gallery, Exhibition Notes "Gray Areas" 2025)