Forrest Bess (October 5, 1911 – November 11, 1977) was a painter. Bess admired the work of Albert Pinkham Ryder and developed his own mystical minimalism. Bess's insistence on isolation in a trailer in a Texas swamp and elaborate theories on immortality through self-administered hermaphrodite surgery made him something of an outsider artist. His known work consists of only about 100 paintings, a number of which have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art.