George Barr

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Born in 1937, George Barr was drawing at the age of three. By 1958, he discovered the world of science fiction fandom. He began to contribute to fanzines and to display his artwork in the convention art exhibits. This led to his first commercial successes - two 1962 covers for Fantastic magazine. He continued to work in advertising and freelanced locally while contributing to fanzines, most notably his work for Tom Reamy's Trumpet.

In 1968, the quality of his fanzine art earned him the Hugo Award for best fan artist. That year, he left Salt Lake City for the potential of Los Angeles and a career as a science fiction artist. Paperback racks were soon filled with his paintings. He did some of the very earliest covers for DAW and worked for Ace, Ballantine and others. The novels of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Thomas Burnett Swann were especially favored subjects.

In 1975, George was given the plum assignment of illustrating the Red Nails volume of Robert E. Howard's Conan for Donald M. Grant publications. This is considered to be one of, if not the, best books in the series. By 1976, Barr was such a presence in the sf/fantasy art world that Grant published a collection of his art entitled Upon the Winds of Yesterday and Other Explorations. The book remains the best collection of George's work.

In the late 70's and through the 80's George did dozens more paperback covers, lots of covers for SF program books, and covers and interior art for Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction and Amazing. When the popular pulp, Weird Tales was revived (again) in 1988, Barr was selected to do the cover and the interior art for the entire issue.

He also designed dust jacket and interior illustrations for Underwood-Miller's collection of Jack Vance stories, Green Magic and the dust jacket for The Dying Earth. A major focus for much of George's art was the covers, interior art and stories for many issues of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine. His impressive body of work ranks him among the most distinctive of all fantasy - science fiction artists.