Barron Storey

Barron Storey (born 1940, Dallas, TX) is an American illustrator, graphic novelist, and educator.

He is famous for his accomplishments as an illustrator and fine artist, as well as for his career as a teacher.

Barron Storey has been a commercial illustrator since the 1960s, and his clients have included major magazines such as Boys' Life, Reader's Digest, and National Geographic.

His cover portraits for Time of Howard Hughes and Yitzhak Rabin hang in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

Storey has taught illustration since the 1970s and currently lives in San Francisco, California and is on the faculty at San Jose State University.

He trained at Art Center in Los Angeles and under Robert Weaver at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Barron Storey was born to Juanita Williamson Storey, and Lewis Barron Storey, a teacher of the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District and a tract home developer in Carrollton, Texas.

His giant painting of the South American rain forest hangs in New York's American Museum of Natural History, and a 1979 rendering of the space shuttle commissioned by NASA, the first official painting ever done of it, hangs in the Air and Space Museum on the National Mall.

As a book illustrator he has done cover illustrations for the Franklin Library classics, War and Peace, The Good Earth and Stories by Sinclair Lewis; as well as the covers of Fahrenheit 451 for Del Rey / Ballantine; and, most famously, the 1980 reissue of Lord of the Flies.

Storey has also published many comics and graphic novels, including The Marat/Sade Journals (Tundra), which was nominated for an Eisner Award, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Endless Nights (DC/Vertigo) which won an Eisner, Tales from the Edge #1-10, Barron Storey’s WATCH Magazine (Vanguard), and Life After Black (Graphic Novel Art).

Several of his students, including Scott McCloud, Peter Kuper, and Dan Brereton, have become leading figures in the graphic novel field.

Storey has taught at the School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute, and San Jose State University.

Storey taught illustration for 30 years and co-chaired the Illustration Department at the California College of Arts and Crafts, in Oakland, CA.

David Choe wrote of Barron in his book, Slow Jams (1999): “Nobody draws better than Barron.

Not you, not your little sister, your architect dad, not your rebellious ex-boyfriend who draws with his own blood, not the most talented kid at your art school.

Not your favorite artist in the whole world; I've seen the work with my own eyes.

Nobody draws better than The Barron.”

Storey married three times.

Storey lost his mother, uncle, an ex-wife, and a best friend, to suicide.

In Summer/Fall of 2015, Storey was forced into retirement by California College of the Arts.

Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman Journal, “Lots of people have learned from Barron Storey: Bill Sienkiewicz, and Dave McKean, and Kent Williams and many others, and they're all very proud to admit it.

He's a true original, and there aren't many of those around.”