Beth Beasley | Paintings
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Q&A with Beth
1. What is your chosen medium?
Gouache, and lately, sometimes oil paint
2. How did you start your career in art?
I’ve taken art classes here and there since I was in high school but am a self-taught painter; I started painting in 2017.
3. What informs your art?
Landscapes I experience, a wide variety of artists (among them, Milton Avery and Ivon Hitchens) and a lot of searching for inspiration on Instagram.
4. What jobs you have worked other than as a professional artist?
I work at Heartwood Gallery in Saluda and also do freelance writing and editing. In my 20s, I worked for an art dealer in San Francisco.
5. What questions do you ask yourself when starting to work?
Do I think the composition is strong? Is this a painting I’m inspired to make, or am I going through the motions? (I’m not always very successful at mindfulness, unfortunately - I just dive in most of the time.)
6. Do you have a quote that’s important to you displayed in your studio? If so, what is it?
"Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." –James Baldwin
7. Which artist (living or not) would you most like to invite for dinner? What would you serve?
Currently, it would be the writer Anne Bronte. I’d treat her to a stir-fry with rice, vegetables and peanut tofu.
8. What has been your most unusual request for your art?
No unusual requests so far.
9. What music are you listening to these days?
While painting, I listen to my music on shuffle, with mostly jazz artists piping in. I find it fun to paint to Yo La Tengo, Brian Eno, Alan Gogoll, among others...
10. What is on your nightstand?
Books, water, alarm clock, herbal extracts, several small ceramic vases and a lamp handmade by potter Tom Ferguson.
“I love observing nature closely, whether lichen on a granite stone or a silhouette of a mountain peak in late afternoon. I try to use color to depict light and form in novel ways that convey the essence of a particular scene. Some of the paintings are based on landscapes I have viewed while others are imagined. I find water media ideal for capturing this dreamy quality”
About Beth
Beth has worked in collage and printmaking (and the occasional handmade book) for the last twenty years. She started painting in 2017 as a break from attempting to write a novel.
A California native, Beth has a degree in art history from Mills College in Oakland. She worked for art dealers in San Francisco in the 1990s, but then abandoned the city for the west coast of Ireland, where she became fascinated by the numinous quality of the landscape there—the same quality that inspires her in the Blue Ridge Mountains.