Steve Ford - Common name, extraordinary talent. It was in grade school back at Valley Station, KY. where Ford developed a steady market for his drawings. He would illustrate the daily fight or daily calamity, and then the winners of the calamity would buy the renderings. From that point on, Ford figured 'This must be what I am supposed to do'. In Jr. High a near fatal fall from a swinging rope seemed to accelerate the young man's creative capacities. Drawing and painting was about all that could be done from the confinement of a set of arm casts. And the work took on a realistic dimension. 'Paint what you know' echo the teachers, and Ford has done just that. He and his brother Tim were versatile athletes involved in sports the year round. Steve was a high school wrestling champion and attended college on a baseball scholarship. His brother Tim was a track and field champion and a college All-American Footballer. Sports was in the blood and in the art. Degas said, 'Everyone has a talent at twenty-five...the difficulty is to have it at fifty'. Young Ford was an innovator and pioneer of southern sports art. Old man Ford has just added more wit to the consistently crisp realism that characterizes his work. Fine artists call him an illustrator, illustrators call him a fine artist, but Steve Ford is best known as an athletic artist.
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