Richard Sloan 'Fire in the Forest' Giclee on Canvas from his 1993 collection.

Considered to be North America's "Dean of Rain Forest Painters," Richard Sloan was born in Chicago, Illinois where he attended the American Academy of Art. He then worked as an advertising illustrator before joining Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo as staff artist.

After a 1966 sell-out solo exhibition at the Abercrombie & Fitch Gallery in Chicago, Sloan left Lincoln Park to embark upon a lifetime of capturing images of the world's rainforests in paint. He was the first North American painter to devote all of his efforts to documenting the animals of the world's rain forests. Since his first trip to British Guiana (Guyana) in 1969, he has made seventeen expeditions to the Amazon Basin, the Peruvian Andes, Guatemala, Trinidad, Tobago, Belize, and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and recently to Thailand.

His paintings have been exhibited at The National Geographic Society's Explorers Hall, The American Museum of Natural History, The California Academy of Sciences, The Carnegie Museum, The Royal Scottish Academy, The Gilcrease Museum and many other museums and galleries throughout the United States. Since 1979, his work has been included in twenty-four Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum Birds in Art exhibitions, and in 1994 the museum conferred upon Sloan the honor of Master Wildlife Artist. In March 2002 at the invitational, juried exhibition Impressions of Bonnet House in Fort Lauderdale, Florida he was given the People’s Choice Award. And in August 2003 he was inducted in The Arizona Outdoor Hall of Fame.

His works are included in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian Institution, The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, The Art Institute of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, The Arizona Wildlife Foundation, The Illinois State Museum, The Denver Museum of Natural History, and private collections throughout the United States, Canada, South America, Europe and Japan.

He has been commissioned by The World Wildlife Fund to design postage stamps and first day covers for Trinidad, Tobago, Guatemala, The Philippines and The Falkland Islands. In spring of 1998, The University of Arizona Press published The Raptors of Arizona, a 220 page volume on the birds of prey of the Southwest, featuring 42 Sloan Paintings. Richard Sloan's work appears in many books, including Wildlife Art/More Paintings of the Modern Masters and The Best of Wildlife Art, volumes 1 and 2.