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Golf and art make for a winning combination
By MARIE STEMPINSKI
Article published on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 |
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![[Image]](/content_images/032508_bhb-01.jpg) |
| Loyal “Bud” Chapman displays the “19th Hole,” one of his watercolors of impossible golf holes. |
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TREASURE ISLAND – Air Force bomber pilot, advertising pioneer, business entrepreneur, gold and silver explorer and world-class golfer. Loyal “Bud” Chapman can claim them all.
But he’s best known for things unreal – things that he makes look so realistic many think they are photographs.
“I like to call it surrealistic realism,” the 85-year-old Treasure Island resident said. “They’re really impossible golf holes set at the top of a mountain or on a waterfall. Some are peopled by figures representing golfing greats and sometimes me and my family.”
Chapman is world famous for his set of 18 “infamous and impossible” holes all painted painstakingly in watercolor. The 19th hole is one of the most ambitious featuring Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria’s castle, his grave, a hole on a polar ice flow, a volcano – in short it’s a composite of all the original 18. Now, the whole set including the 19th hole is for sale to the highest bidder.
It all started when he was quite young.
“When I was about 3 or 4 I would draw with my friends,” Chapman said. “They were all doing stick hands. I was making realistic fingers. I guess I had the ability from the beginning.”
After high school he held many jobs, but always left them to caddy golf.
“I loved to play and be around the game,” he said.
Then World War II broke out and he put his drawing talent to good use in the Army Air Corps with a cartoon strip called “Willie Washout.” Chapman also honed his golf game in the service often playing with high ranking officers.
“But my big ambition was to be a flyer. I wanted my wings. Once I had finished my training I was flying B-29s,” Chapman said. “I remember that I was just about to take off for a bomb run on Saipan when we got the word there was a delay. When we got back to the barracks we were informed that Japan had just surrendered.”
After serving in the military, he took the GI Bill and went to art school. There was a stint doing characterizations in a night club, and another working in a commercial art studio, which led to working on advertising for companies like 3-M, General Mills and Pillsbury.
“I invented a system of painting directly on transparencies,” said Chapman. “I’d make the head on the beer really look good. At the time I was the only one who could do it that well.”
Along the way Chapman married and fathered four children who inherited his artistic talent. He said his advertising career was quite lucrative and allowed him to become quite a business entrepreneur.
“At one time I was worth $6 million,” Chapman said.
Graphic programs on computers ended that part of his career but by then he was exploring for gold and silver.
“I was in New Mexico drilling for a vein when I got the news that my fortune was wiped out,” Chapman said. “What’s
more, I owed the bank for financing the drilling operation. I thought, ‘What can I do?’ It just hit me like a bomb. Why not paint 18 of the most wonderful golf holes in the world. I started with Victoria Falls. I made them look so good people couldn’t tell they weren’t real. I sent the first four to Golf Digest and that was the beginning. The money came in again. I paid off the bank and kept painting. My golf holes have been in Sports Illustrated, National Geographic and several others.”
In the meantime he continued to play golf, often playing with greats like Sam Snead and Arnold Palmer.
“I have a 3 or 4 handicap,” he said.
Chapman’s idea to put the originals of his “impossible golf holes” up for sale is a recent one and he has an agent handling the sale.
Chapman is still painting and plays golf at least three times a week.
“I’ve got to get my handicap down so I can be the oldest guy in the U.S. Open,” he laughed.
For more information on his prints, go to www.tpkgolf.com and click on the Loyal Chapman link.
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Article published on Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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