This year’s Art Show opens Friday night with the Boskone Opening Ceremony and Reception in the Galleria. For more information, please visit our Art Show Information page.

Demos and Discussions

Boskone boasts rich art programming full of live demos, discussions, and exhibits. See our Artists in action as they create a new painting right before your eyes! Also, check out the art show for a unique look at some of the best art in the speculative fiction world and attend our art panels for in-depth and engaging discussions about art and the speculative art field.

Official Artist: Jim Burns

Jim Burns was born in 1948 in Cardiff, South Wales. Among his earliest influences, like so many of his generation, were the classic “Dan Dare-Pilot of the Future” comic strips created by Frank Hampson in The Eagle comic. At the age of eighteen he joined the Royal Air Force, indulging a passion for flying and subsequently soloing on Chipmunk and Jet Provost trainer aircraft, before leaving and opting for an artistic career.

After attending a foundation course at Newport College of Art in South Wales, he completed a three-year course in graphic design and illustration at St Martin’s School of Art in London. During this time he met his wife-to-be, Sue, a fine arts student at the same college. At the end of the course, his work was seen by Young Artists Agency proprietor John Spencer, who invited him to join his expanding roster of artists. In 1975, John Spencer handed over the reins to Alison Eldred–who has remained Jim’s agent ever since. Throughout his career Jim has concentrated almost exclusively on the production of science fiction imagery, mostly for the publishing industry, but with the occasional foray into motion picture production, most notably in 1980 when he contributed pre-production material for Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. His work has been split more or less evenly between Britain and the US, where he is represented by Alan Lynch Artists.

He regularly exhibits his work at science fiction conventions in the UK and the US, giving talks and slide presentations at fan gatherings. He is a three-time winner of the Hugo Award for the Best Professional Artist (and he remains the only Brit to ever to win in this category). He has also won the British Science Fiction Award thirteen times. In his work, Jim’s intention is to convey a photo-realistic depiction of non-existent, science fiction scenarios, with a narrative quality approximating as closely as possible the worlds the writers have created in their texts. In 1997, he embraced the idea of creating these worlds on the Mac and some part his work is now produced digitally. He still feels he has a lot to learn with this technology though!

These days he is starting to paint more personal work, still related to the fantastical…but in a more ‘painterly’ style–in part on canvas…as opposed to the smooth, gessoed boards he formerly preferred.

Jim Burns and his wife live in the West Country town of Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England. He has three daughters–Elinor, Megan and Gwendolen as well as a son, Joseph.

Artists Displaying in the Art Show

100	Jim Burns
101	Alan Beck
102	Lisa Cohen
103	Duncan Eagleson
104	Bob Eggleton
105	Lori Del Genis
106	Lisa Hertel
107	Jon Hunt
108	Johnna Klukas
109	Jonathan Kutzer
110	Charles Lang
111	Elizabeth LaValley
112	Kimberly Leach
113	Sally Mayer
114	Lauren A. Mills
115	Sarah Morrison
116	Erika Morton
117	Priscilla Olson
118	Christopher Paniccia
119	Marianne Plumridge-Eggleton
120	Kimball Rudeen
121	Dave Seeley
122	Wendy Snow-Lang
124	Kriev
125	Jim Zaccaria
126	Joleen Flasher
127	Joe Souza
128	Christopher Mindle
129	Reiko Rice
130	E.J. Barnes
131	Daniel Venjean
132	Charlene D’Alessio
133	Ruth Sanderson
134	Anne Nydam
202	Theresa Halbert
203	Patricia McCracken
204	David Lee Pancake
205	Lubov Yegudin

Art Show & Tours

Boskone features the most impressive speculative art show in New England. This year’s Art Show will showcase original works by our Official Artist as well as dozens of artists from  New England and beyond. The show will have 100 panels, plus about a dozen tables for 3-D work. For an up-to-date listing of confirmed artists, please visit Boskone’s Artists/Art Resellers page.

For those interested in taking a piece of original art home, the Art Show hosts a silent auction which runs through throughout the weekend, closing at noon on Sunday. Winning bids and art show sales occur from 1-3pm on Sunday.

Print Shop

The Art Show also includes a Print Shop, with hundreds of reproductions available for immediate sale, and a resale area where anyone may enter previously-purchased items that they wish to sell.

Special Exhibit: From the Collection of Joe Siclari and Edie Stern

Over the last 15 years, Joe Siclari and Edie Stern have put together over a dozen Historical Art Retrospectives for Boskone and World Fantasy Conventions, and contributed to others. From “Magazine Covers” to “Black and White Illustrations,” from “Art from the Pages of Spectrum” to examples of “Non-Human Intelligence,” from displays of “SFWA Grand Masters” to “50 years of Boskone Guests of Honor,” they compiled exhibits that showed the growth of the art of SF&F. These exhibits were put together with contributions from dozens of collectors and artists, as well as from their own collections.

Last year’s show on non-human intelligence was to have been the last. However, they have agreed to do one more exhibit. This time it will be from their collection only. It is a selection of some of their favorite pieces that have not been shown at a Boskone before.

There will be about 40 pieces in this exhibit, ranging from early 1900s to early this century. This show includes some of the greatest artists in the genre, both classical and contemporary. Some of the artists represented in the show include Julie Bell, Hannes Bok, Chesley Bonestell, Margaret Brundage, Vincent Di Fate, Leo and Diane Dillon, Dean Ellis, Ed Emsh, Robert Foster, Kelly Freas, John Harris, Paul Lehr, Ian Miller, John Jude Palencar, Willy Pogany, Richard Powers, John Schoenherr, Lawrence Sterne Stevens, Jean Pierre Targete, H. R. Van Dongen, Boris Vallejo, Ron Walotsky and Gahan Wilson.

We hope you will enjoy this exhibit. To find out more about the art, you might want to join them during their docent tours.