The Art of Angling: Sid Bingham

KERN RIVER KERN RIVER
SUNDAY MORNING, KERN RIVER

Sid Bingham was born in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1950. Early in his childhood, he and his two brothers and sister spent a lot of time in the outdoors. Their grandfather took them fishing for bream, pinfish, and bass in the nearby lakes and delta swamps and also crabbing off of the piers in Gulfport. As they got older, they added deep-sea fishing.

Bingham’s interest in art didn’t emerge until his senior year at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. Looking for an “easy A” class, he signed up for Watercolor 101 with Professor James Green. He was immediately captivated by the power and magic of the medium. Green instilled a love of and respect for watercolors and a strong sense of design.

After graduating with a combined history and business major, Bingham and his wife, Patty, moved to Los Angeles to attend the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where he received a bachelor of fine arts degree in illustration.

The family, now including three daughters, then moved to La Crescenta. During the summers and school vacations, they would go camping in Yosemite and travel back East to see family and work as staff at a summer camp in Missouri.

Bingham’s early career involved creating news graphics at Los Angeles television station KNBC, getting an education in short deadlines and solving visual issues quickly. He then embarked on a career in freelance art, producing illustrations and designs for major corporations across the country. Over his professional career, he has illustrated and designed for Walt Disney Imagineering, Disney Motion Picture Promotions, Universal Studios, the Thinkwell Group, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, BRC Imagination Arts, Contour, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Harlem Globetrotters, Toyota,

AT&T, and various other Fortune 500 companies. Now going on 27 years as a freelance artist, Bingham continues to find “blue sky” concept art — the art of visualizing ideas for proposed projects — most satisfying.

Sid’s love of watercolors has always stayed with him as he continued to create paintings for corporate offices and restaurants, as well as fine-art paintings of figures, landscapes, and still lifes. Many are drawn from his extensive overseas travels. He also teaches watercolor classes at colleges as well as in private settings.

Bingham describes his f ine art as trying to capture the feeling of his subject, rather than just being a camera recording the scene. His goal is to capture the unique essence of the individual or landscape with his use of vivid color and strong composition.

He states that he “has been most fortunate to have good fishing friends who
introduced me to the Kern River, one of my favorite painting locations. I have found early morning on the Kern magical.”