Background Information

The difference between a "combat artist" and a "military illustrator" is that the combat artist has to have been on the front lines and witnesses the events he portrays, as opposed to recreating scenes and images from imagination or descriptions provided by others. In addition to being an official U.S. Navy Combat Artist, Soldier of Fortune magazine called Beck the only American painter who can lay claim to being the "Cold War's Combat Artist." (SOF Jan 99).

Like Frederic Remington, Winslow Homer, and cowboy artist Charlie Russell in the 19th Century, Chip Beck lived and experienced the history, scenes, and people he depicts. Sometimes, his artistic renderings were secondary aspects of his missions in faraway countries. Other times, such as Operation Desert Storm, when the U.S. Navy sent him to cover the war as an artist, it was his primary duty.

Just as the works of Remington, Homer, Russell, Chandler, Brodie, and other artists who rendered history in the making are highly prized works of art by collectors, so too will the works of Commander Beck one day be representative of a world and events few artists, and not too many Americans in general, experienced directly.

Commander Chip Beck experienced and was involved in wars, revolutions, and conflicts in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, the Western Sahara (POLISARIO war), Sudan (civil war), Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, Libya, Beirut, Kuwait (Operation Desert Storm), El Salvador, Honduras/Nicaragua, Panama (Operation Just Cause), Afghanistan, Colombia and the Caribbean (drug wars), Grenada, Cuba, and the Soviet bloc (Cold War). Additionally, he has traveled to 67 foreign countries in his career, from which more paintings and sketches have been and are forthcoming.

Beck has 130 paintings in government collections of the Navy, Pentagon, State Department, National Defense University, Kuwaiti Embassy, and the U.S. Postal Service. Beck originals are also owned by writer Tom Clancy, actor Tom Selleck, the Director General of the U.S. Foreign Service, and private collectors.

Individual clients, museums, collectors, or corporations who wish to purchase original works (individually or as collections) of art from these historic periods, order limited edition prints, or commission new originals should contact the artist.