Drew Gentle

Drew Gentle (b. 1947, Los Angeles) is an artist whose career spans more than five decades across animation and fine art. He began working as an assistant to his father, Robert Gentle, at Hanna-Barbera Studios, and later earned a BFA in painting from the California Institute of the Arts. Gentle spent over 50 years as an animation artist with studios including Disney and Hanna-Barbera, contributing to iconic projects such as The Smurfs, Scooby Doo, Ghostbusters, The Flintstones, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and The Land Before Time.

Throughout his animation career, Gentle maintained a parallel fine art practice, creating abstracted figurative drawings, paintings, and sculpture — often captured in notebooks as a personal , exploratory counterpoint to studio work. These drawings later became the foundation for an expansive series. In 2007, Gentle left Los Angeles and the animation industry to focus fully on his fine art practice, relocating to Eureka Springs, Arkansas. His work has been exhibited in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and throughout Arkansas.