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Obituaries - Artist-professor Roy DeForest dies at 77 - sacbee.com 
http://www.sacbee.com/obituaries/story/189089.html

So instead, they settled for the same language often used to describe his acclaimed work, which, they said, was an extension of DeForest himself:

Whimsical. Delightful. Charming, yet penetrating, intense and full of meaning. 

He was a man who - like his art -- was a "constant surprise," said Harvey Himelfarb, a former colleague at the University of California, Davis, art department.

"I've never been around anyone who was so unpredictable in the way he looked at the world," Himelfarb said. "He was a magical person."

DeForest, a nationally renowned artist and professor, died unexpectedly Friday at the age of 77.

News of his death in a Bay Area hospital during an unrelated doctor's visit sent ripples throughout the art world, which celebrated DeForest as a founding member of the "California funk" art movement. 

"There's one less unbelievable imagination in the world," Himelfarb said. Upon hearing of DeForest's death, he said, "I really felt the world had lost a major thinker and a major imagination."

DeForest came from humble beginnings, born to a farmworker family in Nebraska during the Great Depression. He grew up in Nebraska, Colorado and Washington, where he studied math and humanities at Yakima Junior College. 

He went on to study art at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and received bachelor's and master's degrees from San Francisco State University.

DeForest joined the UC Davis art faculty as a lecturer in 1965, becoming a full professor in 1974 and retiring in 1992. During his early tenure, he became part of a core faculty that included Robert Arneson, Manuel Neri, Wayne Thiebaud and William Wiley. The heavyweights developed a national reputation for both the school and their own art.

"I would've driven to work on Sundays just to be around them," current art professor Mike Henderson said admiringly of his colleagues of the time.

Primarily a canvas painter, DeForest created whimsical scenes in vivid colors that often included dogs -- inspired by his cattle dogs at home -- and fantastical creatures.

Himelfarb described his former colleague's work as "very profound and very interesting," tackling "fundamentally human" issues of where reality stops and magic starts.

That very distinction was difficult to draw in DeForest's own life, Himelfarb said. He said the artist "lived half in the world and half in his imagination."

"It was really hard to tell where one left off and the other began," Himelfarb said.

DeForest's wife of almost 34 years, Gloria, mused that her husband painted fanciful scenes "to entertain himself, probably."

And yet DeForest's work, and his personality, entertained so many more. Victoria Dalkey, The Bee's art critic, said his art was filled with vision and imagination. But she cautioned against dismissing DeForest's art as lighthearted or simply cute.

"It was also very raw and emotive and imaginative," she said. "There's always kind of an emotional edge to it that gives it a meatier quality."

DeForest broke into the art world's consciousness with a 1974 show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and a 1975 opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

His work continues to be showcased from Sacramento -- some pieces are on display in the Center for Contemporary Art -- to the East Coast. Himelfarb said DeForest's art can be found in the most major museums across the country. 

But those closest to DeForest said part of his charm was his irreverence when it came to the larger art world. He was not concerned, they said, with what was "in" or "out" what other artists were doing or what people would think of his craft.

"He wasn't self-conscious," said Gloria DeForest. "He didn't care about prestige. He just cared about making art." 

5/22/07 8:28 AM