Jim Lamb was born in Hamilton, Montana. His family later moved to the Seattle, WA area where he was raised. Both of his parents were creative people, and his father worked briefly as a free-lance illustrator during the late 1940’s, but soon began a career as a draftsman and mechanical designer which lasted 30 years. Having parents who appreciated art and the beauty of nature instilled in Jim from an early age the desire to create artwork. Frequent family outings to the mountains and rural areas of the Northwest as well as annual summer trips to visit relatives in the Bitterroot Valley in western Montana contributed to his growing interest in the landscape around him. After four years of college and a four-year stint in the Navy, Jim set out on his course to pursue art, prints and posters. He moved to the southern California area where he slowly began to build his reputation as a freelance illustrator, while taking courses at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles on the side. Over the next 15 years he developed a successful career working for many prestigious clients, including commissions from the Smithsonian Institution, the National Football League, and the U.S. Postal Service, as well as numerous leading movie studios, advertising agencies and national corporations.
Jim’s long-held interest in the landscape remained with him over the years, and finally, about ten years ago, he made the decision to pursue, in his spare time, the painting of landscape art, prints and posters. Lamb’s entire illustration career was built around working from photographs, and so the idea of working from life, with all of the challenges presented by nature made Jim realize that he was going to have to learn how to paint, and paint more rapidly. It was an awesome challenge. He took several workshops from some leading contemporary landscape painters, which proved to be invaluable in his desire to pursue the direct depiction of nature. Over the past fifteen years Jim Lamb’s work has literally been seen around the world in the form of limited edition prints, collectible plates, greeting cards, puzzles, posters, apparel, postage stamps, sculptures, and many other forms.
In 1991 Lamb was chosen Artist of the Year for the nationally known Southeastern Wildlife Exposition in Charleston, South Carolina. His art, prints and posters were also selected for the National Birds in Art Show which traveled to Japan and can be seen in North Lights book, The Best of Wildlife. The US Postal Service recently included Jim’s work in a show at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts displaying the best of 40 years of US stamp designs, and the show is scheduled to travel to several other museum venues in the US.