Photo – Courtesy of the NASCAR Hall of Fame

Buz McKim hails from Hackensack, N.J. and was born into the sport of auto racing with a father who owned cars which competed in the NASCAR Sportsman and NASCAR Modified Divisions on northeastern race tracks in the early 1950’s. While still in high school McKim attempted a driving career, but, as a natural-born artist, found it was more profitable to paint the numbers on the cars instead.

He pursued a career in commercial art, creating many pieces of work used in Indianapolis 500 yearbooks of the mid-1970s and also designed many paint schemes for cars in NASCAR’s premier series during the 1970’s including the 1975 and 1976 Daytona 500-winning cars of Benny Parsons and David Pearson, respectively. McKim was commissioned by Anheuser-Busch to paint the official portrait of 1997 NASCAR Busch Series champion Randy Lajoie and 1998 champ Dale Earnhardt Jr. McKim later developed a line of limited-edition racing prints dealing with historical NASCAR moments from the careers of Richard Petty, Mark Martin and NASCAR legend Fireball Roberts.  Continue reading →