Sporting Artists

When you contact an artist, please let them know who connected you.

2024 – Adriano Manocchia

2021 – Mark Lewchik  

2020 – Alan James Robinson

A consummate fly fisherman Alan has searched for every major subspecies of trout and salmon in North America and spent many summers exploring the famed waters of Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. For 10 years he had a permanent campsite on the fabled waters of the Beaverkill, Willowemoc and the Delaware Rivers of New York- the birthplace of American fly fishing. He has fished every continent except for the Arctic and Antarctic.

Commissioned as an illustrator, Alan’s images have appeared in various publications and magazines for Disney, Chronicle Books, Random House, Knopf, Lyons Press, Fly Rod and Reel, Safari Press, Sporting Classics, National Wildlife, Gray’s Sporting Journal, The Fisherman, Fly Fisherman and Yankee Magazines. Although he rarely works in any other media but pencil and watercolor now, to this day Alan doesn’t consider himself a watercolorist. Alan holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Printmaking-Etchings and Woodengravings and Sculpture from the University of Massachusetts.

2019 – CD Clarke

CD (Christopher) Clarke is a renowned and often commissioned artist in oils and watercolors. His creations focus on fresh and salt water fishing, and upland and waterfowl hunting. His work has appeared in magazines such as Gray’s Sporting Journal, Fly Rod & Reel, and Field & Stream, and in books such as River Music by Jim Bibb and a special edition of Trout Bum by John Gierach. His paintings have been exhibited in the Easton Waterfowl Festival, The Birds in Art exhibition at the Woodson Art Museum, and the National Sporting Library and Museum.

Clarke is a dedicated angler and hunter who began fishing and hunting as a boy in upstate New York, and is well versed in the sports he portrays. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University in 1981 he has spent decades focusing in on the people, game and equipment involved in the pursuit of fish and game. He and his wife both serve on the board of directors of the Atlantic Salmon Federation.

Perhaps uniquely among sporting artists, Clarke will accept commissions to accompany patrons on fishing or hunting trips and create art based on their experiences together. He uses both a camera and sketches on four to six trips a year, fixing the picture in mind, and then either creating the work on site or on his return to his studio in Oldwick, NJ.

2018 – Gene Bahr

Gene is a master carver who recreates angling experiences through his lifelike creations. “From just a photo and a few measurements,” he said, “I know I can recreate the fish for the angler. And the fish can go free.”

Born in Alabama, Gene came to Maine during his time in the Navy. He began mounting fish using taxidermy in 1976, and started carving fish in 1984. By 2000 Gene had switched entirely to “Catch and Release” wood carving. His extensive collection of fish profiles, measurements and photographs and his study of fish anatomy and color, has enabled him to produce long lasting and valuable representations of living fish.

2017 – Bill Elliott

Bill spent five years as Art Director at the Bronx Zoo before moving on to notably illustrate magazines and books. Bill drew on his experiences trout fishing and upland game hunting to produce a sold-out series of lithographs depicting upland game and fresh and salt water fish. The artist then spent a quarter century in Florida drawing salt water fish that could be taken on a fly. Most recently, Bill has circled back to painting scenes of hunting dogs and trout and salmon. His art is notable for its appealing realism. Bill has recently been inducted into the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame.

2016 – James Prosek

2015 – Chet Reneson

“His watercolors of wildfowl-hunting and salmon-angling are so deft and dramatic he sells them as fast he paints them. They show brooding skies, perky retrievers, raised shotguns, curling backcasts, white explosions of water; the blazing foliage and dank marshes of autumn, and winds and snow squalls you can almost feel hitting your cheeks. Gazing at some of Reneson’s best work makes you shiver; and want to huddle beside a riverside campfire.”

(Atlantic Salmon Journal – Summer, 1993)

2014 – Charles McCaughtry

The interaction of earth, water, air and light are major themes in Charles McCaughtry’s work as well as his love of fly fishing, fishing flies, and small boats. Whennot painting, he is fly fishing, canoeing, or hiking where he gets much of his inspiration.

Charley has exhibited widely in galleries, museums, and institutions and he has held over fifty one man exhibits.

Recent honors include commissions from the Liberty Bank in Middletown, CT; the Dodd Center at the University of Connecticut, and the Hartford Life Insurance Company, Hartford, Connecticut. Charley has also been recognized by Who’s Who in American Art, and American Artists of Renown

2013 – Luther Kelly Hall

Luther Kelly Hall is an internationally acclaimed sporting artist. His paintings and illustrations have been featured in sporting publications, galleries and collections throughout the US, Canada and Japan.

Walk 100 yards out of Hall’s studio door and you will step into the salt water of the Atlantic Ocean.- the backdrop and the centerpiece of much of Hall’s dramatic sporting images. Whether maneuvering his center console among the rocks and rips and seams of his coastal environment in pursuit of Stripers or casting the windswept and wave swept rocky precipices of Atlantic New England’ Hall gathers the visual and sensory material for his saltwater fly fishing portrayals.

The fly fishing experience, the drama, the adventure, the comedy and the serenity of those experiences have become the primary frame work of Hall’s paintings. Montana’s Madison River. Yellowstone National Park’s Slough Creek, Pennsylvania’s Spruce Creek, Quebec, Canada’s Grand Cascapedia River and Atlantic Coastal New England are his most portrayed waters.

2012 – Peter Corbin

In a painting career that has spanned more than 40 years and produced a body of work bearing comparison to the likes of A.B. Frost and Ogden Pleissner, Peter Corbin has established himself as one of the finest American sporting artists of his generation. But while his reputation is based primarily on his meticulously composed scenes of sport – fly fishing and wingshooting in particular – the paintings collected in his portfolio reveal the full range of his talent, the stunning breadth of his reach and vision. Landscapes, portraits of people and dogs, depictions of birds and other wildlife in their natural habitat, equestrian art: These too are realms in which Corbin’s classic style and respectful sensibility have made a lasting mark. (By Tom Davis)