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Beacham Owen (born June 23, 1944, in Lynchburg, Virginia, USA) is an American motorsports artist, racer and writer. He was employed by NBC for a short time in the 1980s and did several skits on Late Night with David Letterman. He worked with actor/writer, Chris Elliott and Letterman's head writer Steve O'Donnell (now with Jimmy Kimmel). Through the Letterman connection Owen was commissioned to paint a portrait of Letterman's friend and future race team partner, Bobby Rahal in his Champ Car for Miller Brewing Company to hang in their corporate offices in the South Pacific. He also painted a race scene of Brazilian Formula 1 star Ayrton Senna shown at the Monaco Grand Prix soon after Senna's death in 1994 that was very popular in the U.S., Europe and South America.




He and his wife, German-born artist, Birgit Friedrich Owen founded Owen Art Studios in 1984 where they create art and limited edition art prints for the international motorsports market. The studio also restores and prints vintage racing photos.

In 2004 they moved the art studios and giclee printing facility from Bradenton, Florida to San Francisco, California and in 2005 started another studio in Southern California. Although his racing art was very popular and doing well, in 2005 he created a motorcycle canyon riding scene titled "The Pace" that was inspired by a very popular, trend-setting article in Motorcyclist Magazine by Nick Ienatsch and Mitch Boehm. The very scenic art piece captured the mystique of motorcycle sport touring and was an instant world-wide success, establishing Owen as a unique artist who can combine landscape fine-art with motorsports. These scenic back-road motorcycle paintings set him apart from other motorsports artists and brought motorsports art into the living rooms of art collectors. His work has been seen in AutoWeek, Car, Cycle World, Motorcyclist, Racer, Road & Track, Roadracing World and Sport Rider magazines.

Early Life and Career

During the 70's, Beacham Owen worked as a an illustrator, art director and publisher in Florida and Southern California. Always the consummate “motorhead,” he would doodle and draw cars and motorcycles for fun. As a columnist for the Daily News in Los Angeles County, California, he interviewed Sam Posey and met Lothar Motschenbacher, Bob Bondurant, Peter Revson, Parnelli Jones and many other legendary drivers of the decade. His dream was always to introduce motorsports full time into his career.

In the early 80's, he began professionally painting and illustrating high-action motorsports scenes. He began painting in oils and acrylics on canvas, and switched mediums to create art using an airbrush technique that includes pen and ink, brushed acrylics and digital enhancement.

In the late 90's, for inspiration, the artist got closer to the action and began racing himself, driving a Formula Ford in the Barber Dodge Series, then motorcycles in Formula USA/Championship Cup roadracing events. During that time, he was also part of the team that put Italy’s Mauro Cereda to a 9th-place finish at the famed Daytona 200 motorcycle race and later that year to win the 2001 AMA (American Motorcyclist Association) Superbike Rookie-of-the-Year Award. Beacham last raced in 2002 ending his 5-year, part-time racing career. In his only full season of racing he finished third in the series.

Also in the 90s to help finance the cost of racing, he began working with his brother, Larry Owen, a former McCann-Erickson creative director in a concentrated effort to develop new marketing strategies in direct-response promotions for national and international publishers focusing on finance, investments, health, retirement, household products and gardening. The two worked together with some of the top copywriters/marketers in the country including Clayton Makepeace and Kent Komae.
For ten years the team developed promotions for Weiss Research (Dr. Martin Weiss' Safe Money Report), Howard Ruff (The Ruff Times), Forbes Magazine, Martin Elelston's Boardroom, Inc. (Bottom Line/Personal) and The Jerry Baker Company, among others.

Trivia

As a child in 1953, he had a conversation with president Harry S. Truman during an elevator ride to the newsroom of the Washington Evening Star newspaper where his father, Frank Owen was city editor.

He was a close friend and sailing buddy of NBC trial artist and New Yorker magazine illustrator Leo Hershfield. After Hershfield's death in 1979 Hershfield's drawing board, many sketches, illustrations, watercolor paintings and his life-long collection of image files were given to Beacham by Hershfield's wife Mary Emma, a former Radio City Rockette.

Is the God son of actor, Thomas Mason "Crimes of the Heart ," "In A Shallow Grave", "Mississippi Burning", "Gods and Generals". Before his acting career, Mason was a lawyer who was appointed district attorney of Virginia by president John F. Kennedy. Both he and Kennedy were PT Boat officers during World War II.

As a child, Owen received an large original drawing of Pogo from political cartoonist Walt Kelly -- a friend of Owen's father.

As a teenager he worked with cartoonist Fred Lasswell (Snuffy Smith).

As a teenager had a job driving new MGA, Austin-Healey, and Triumph sports cars from Port of Miami to the dealers in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.

His artist wife Birgit Owen, was a child circus performer and traveled North America during her summers performing a center-ring acrobatic act. She was also voted her senior class president and valedictorian, earned a university liberal arts degree with honors, a motorcycle certificate from the MSF (Motorcycle Safety Foundation), a private pilot’s license, and has performed in a Great Lakes aerobatic biplane.

External links

Official Beacham Owen website

Owen Art Studios website