Artist Bio
Gary & Jan Bertram
Drawing has been one of Gary’s passions since he was a child, but he didn’t become a professional artist until later in life. After four years in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, he completed a degree in music education at the University of Kentucky. He has spent the past twenty nine years working as either a teacher, a minister of music, or an associate pastor. However, during his college years, he started doing portraits of people, and for the last twenty years has been doing them on commission. Then in 2001, Gary became interested in wildlife portraiture, and in short order began exhibiting in some of the most elite wildlife art shows in the country, including the Safari Club International and the Southern Wildlife Festival, where in 2006 he won the coveted "People’s Choice Award." And, after only five years in the wildlife art field, he has already won "Best of Show" and "Best of Professional" in several regional art shows.
Gary has also produced equine art of such high quality that it is registered with the Saddlebred Museum at the prestigious Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky, as well as with the Kentucky Artisan Center in Berea, Kentucky.
Gary has been on short-term missions to both Belize and Mexico, and he has also produced two albums of original music. He has been married to his childhood sweetheart, Jan, for 34 years, and they have two grown children, Paul, who is married and lives in Crittenden, Kentucky, and Christy, who lives in southern California.
