ARTIST STATEMENT
![Joe Farnham Baseball Artist](/uploads/2/8/8/9/28891215/5136428.jpg)
I try to capture the essence of baseball the way it was played many years ago. The players from this time were often from America’s farms and mills. They did not play merely for money and most of them worked jobs in the off-season to pay their bills. I find these old-time players and the game of that era fascinating. There was a hard edged quality to the players and that element was displayed in the way the game was played.The players often played in dirty uniforms before crowds large and small in towns and cities across this country. They played baseball because they loved the game. I attempt to convey this simpler way of being in my depictions of these men and women.
My parents and other family members worked in the mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, once a vibrant industrial city. I think that due to the strong identification I have with working-class people I also feel an equally strong bond with these players who share perhaps similar backgrounds. These players had no agents and only the most well-known had endorsement contracts. The owners controlled their salaries and the the players had little or no leverage or bargaining power.
I am a graduate of the New England School of Art & Design and worked as an award-winning advertising art director before converting to freelance illustration. I have completed commissions for well-known publications including Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian, Yankee, Scholastic, Boston Magazine and many more. My award-winning illustrations were done for prestigious companies such as Hasbro, John Hancock, Houghton Miflin and many more. Many of the images displayed on this site are commissioned paintings. When I am not creating new baseball imagery I enjoy painting the scenes around the coast of the North Shore of Massachusetts and Maine’s Monhegan Island.
My parents and other family members worked in the mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, once a vibrant industrial city. I think that due to the strong identification I have with working-class people I also feel an equally strong bond with these players who share perhaps similar backgrounds. These players had no agents and only the most well-known had endorsement contracts. The owners controlled their salaries and the the players had little or no leverage or bargaining power.
I am a graduate of the New England School of Art & Design and worked as an award-winning advertising art director before converting to freelance illustration. I have completed commissions for well-known publications including Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian, Yankee, Scholastic, Boston Magazine and many more. My award-winning illustrations were done for prestigious companies such as Hasbro, John Hancock, Houghton Miflin and many more. Many of the images displayed on this site are commissioned paintings. When I am not creating new baseball imagery I enjoy painting the scenes around the coast of the North Shore of Massachusetts and Maine’s Monhegan Island.