Roger Blum

Roger Blum was born and raised in Watsonville, California, a beautiful region along the northern California coast. He spent much of his youth hunting, fishing and exploring the natural world around him. His father was an avid sportsman of both field and stream and spawned in his son the desire for knowledge and experience that gives Blum’s art its credibility. His first upland painting was a watercolor that he gave to his father on Father’s Day. The painting depicted a ringneck pheasant being flushed from cover at a spot he and his dad often hunted.

Toward the end of high school, Blum’s close neighborhood friend encouraged him to take an art class to channel his creative ideas. When his teacher showed him some sporting images by Winslow Homer, Blum said a buzz went through him that has never left. He was so focused on the idea of painting what he loved that his previous career ideas soon vanished.

Blum graduated from college with a B.A. in Commercial Art and a Master’s Degree in Illustration from San Jose State University. Drafted into the Army in 1965, he was chosen to be one of five enlisted men to go to Viet Nam as a combat artist. This was the first time the Army solicited enlisted artists to volunteer for combat duty in a war zone. His paintings and drawings of this experience have been exhibited at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and other venues.

While finishing his Master’s Degree at San Jose State University, an art recruiter from Hallmark Cards came to the campus and on the strength of Blum’s watercolors and sporting themes, hired him on the spot. After two years at Hallmark Cards, he accepted a call to teach Art at the college level where he taught for thirteen years and chaired two college Art departments. He learned a lot in the classroom and loved every day of it. His students challenged everything that he knew and exposed everything that he didn’t know. In 1984, he decided it was time to move on and devote all his energies to painting. He moved to New England where he began to focus on a career as a Sporting Artist.

Blum has studied with two masters of both watercolor and oil, namely Tom Nicholas, NA, AWS, and Vernon Nye, AWS. In his artwork, Blum strives to find his own language as he interprets the scenes before him. He continues his passion to paint field and stream and capture in his work those memories familiar to all who love the world of the wild and beautiful.

Blum’s paintings are now in numerous private and corporate collections and have been used extensively in sporting journals and books.