Forrest Bess is a fascinating look at an artist who truly believed that art could save his life. Painter, fisherman and pseudo-hermaphrodite, Forrest Bess lived his life in obscurity at an isolated bait camp off the East Coast of Texas. From 1949 through to 1967, Bess showed at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City, along with superstar artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Rediscovered after his death in 1977, Bess' small visionary paintings are now prized by museums and collectors for their primal beauty and fetch over $100,000 each.

Author Biography

Chuck Smith is a New York based producer, writer, and filmmaker who has directed numerous documentaries and series for the National Geographic Channel, Discovery, and TLC. Prior to his work for cable TV, Smith was a producer for CBS News and Michael Moore's TV Nation. In 1997, Smith and photographer Ari Marcopoulos, author of Transitions and Exits (powerHouse Books, 2000), produced and directed the award-winning documentary Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle, which features actor Willem Dafoe as the voice of Forrest Bess. Smith's short films and video interviews with artists such as Agnes Martin can be found on YouTube at chucksmithNYC. Robert Thurman is Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, President of Tibet House U.S., and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies. He has BA, AM, and PhD degrees from Harvard and has studied in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in India and the United States. The New York Times recently hailed him as "the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism."