Roy De Forest’s quirky, irreverent paintings often include whimsical scenes of horses, dogs and other animals, or cartoon-like characters journeying through bizarre landscapes that incorporate gentle humor and countercultural aesthetics. While his work defies categorization, he is often grouped with artists of the mid-1960s California Funk Art movement. These artists, mainly from the San Francisco Bay Area, opposed the “high art” seriousness of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. Drawing inspiration from pop culture, especially underground cartoon culture, they created their own idiosyncratic visual languages that defied traditional artmaking. Born in North Platte, Nebraska, Roy De Forest began his higher education as an engineering student at Yakima Junior College. He attended the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) and later the San Francisco State College, where he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. He taught at several West Coast schools before becoming a Professor of Art at the University of California at Davis in 1965. He continued teaching at UC-Davis until he retired in 1982. DeForest’s art is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.