A day in the life of an artist.
Finally, I have arrived home after nearly a six month stay in the UK and France. I painted like a mad-woman while there and completed nearly fifty paintings. Now I am framing the paintings so that I can supply my galleries with fresh work.
Below you will find one of these paintings titled Open Sweep of Country. It rained a lot while in England.
This is the time of year when I begin to set up shows for the upcoming year. I am pleased to announce that I have thus far booked two shows. One is a one woman show to be held at the Canyon Road
Contemporary Art Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico in late August. August 7th I will not only have an exhibit showcasing new works but will also demonstrate my painting technique at the Squash Blossom Gallery located in Colorado Springs. Hope to see you there!
Winter Light
I have completed six new paintings and other than that I have been mostly keeping house and exploring our city. Once a week I take a bus into the Sainsbury Art Institute to listen to an evening lecture.
This weekend we plan to rent a car and drive around East Anglia. Should be fun. Next weekend we will take the train to London. It should be a two hour train ride. We know someone that is going to get us into the “behind the scenes areas” of the British Museum. Can’t wait!
I am very excited to announce that I was featured as “An Artist to Watch” in the Southwest Art Magazine. This prominent art magazine showcases some of the finest artwork in the United States and I was beyond delighted when the senior editor of the magazine, Bonnie Ganglehoff, called me and told me that the magazine would like to write an article about me as an artist. Yipee! I nearly dropped the phone when I heard the news. As I understand it, getting into this magazine is like an archaeologist being showcased in the National Geographic magazine. Here’s the article for those of you that missed it:
Southwest Art Magazine, November 2008 issue
Artist to Watch
Bonnie Gangelhoff
Kathy Beekman evokes the spare landscapes of Edward Hopper
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Colorado painter Kathy Beekman knew she would become an artist from the time she was 4 years old and was fond of carting around a tattered tin can full of crayons. As a little girl she remembers thinking, “It’s so great to be an artist.” By the time Beekman was in elementary school, her teachers and classmates recognized her as the class artist. It seemed destined to be her job in life, whether it was drawing the comic strip cat Garfield for friends or rendering three witches from a story that captivated her young imagination. “I was just drawing and coloring all the time,” she recalls.
It came as no surprise to anyone who knew her that after graduation, Beekman headed to college to study art. In her program at Sienna Heights University in Adrian, MI, students were encouraged to develop their own styles. “We never had to mimic a teacher. There was never a right or wrong way to do things,” she remembers.
That laissez faire philosophy was both a blessing and a curse, Beekman says. The downside was that after she graduated college, she suddenly felt adrift artistically. She worked at a civic theater back ‰ home in Indiana painting backdrops and in a frame shop, but as she recalls, “Not a lot was happening in terms of my career.”
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Eventually she decided to take a class in archeology. It was a fortuitous decision, because in class she met her future husband and eventually traveled with him to Mexico in 1999 after he landed a job directing an archeology project. During her yearlong stay in Mexico, she experienced a turning point in her art career. Having run out of the white paper that she was accustomed to using with her pastels, she turned to black paper. It caused the colors to pop in a way that delighted her. Today she uses black paper 99 percent of time, blending the pastel dust into the paper’s tooth to obtain a clean, non-textured look.
Her peaceful portraits of houses and barns are reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s spare landscapes, evoking a sense of nostalgia and solitude. But Beekman says one of her greatest influences is Georgia O’Keeffe. “I am nearly obsessed with her life and work. She was a woman working in a man’s world, and she didn’t mimic other artists,” Beekman explains. “O’Keeffe was very much her own person and I draw strength from that fact.”
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These days Beekman’s landscapes are also influenced by her surroundings. Her home and studio are perched about 8,600 feet up in the Rocky Mountains. “The sky here is big, with enormous cloud formations,” Beekman says. “The vastness of the natural landscape inspires my work. My paintings reflect how I think and feel about Colorado.”
In her spare time, Beekman is president of the Evergreen Arts Association and is writing a book about how to be a successful artist—a guide to organizing, marketing, and networking, among other things.
She is represented by Cogswell Gallery, Vail, CO; The Squash Blossom, Colorado Springs, CO; Canyon Road Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM.
Upcoming Show
Group show at Canyon Road Contemporary Art, December 22-January 1.
A recent trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico in order to deliver paintings to the Canyon Road Contemporary Art gallery proved to be fruitful. The drive is six hours one way and a very lonely road. I am always sure to have my camera with me because I never know what I might come across that will insprie my next painting.
It only takes a few minutes while on the road before I pull out the camera and my husband makes his usual comment with a chuckle, “there she goes taking another 500 pictures”. Five hundred photos is no exaggeration especially since the advent of digital cameras. All of the photos I take I use as reference material and this particular road trip provided me with excellent cloud shots.
March 1st was a full day for me. After teaching a pastel class titled “Color Shock” at the Foothills Art Center in Golden I was off to meet a friend, Tricia Bass, for lunch. I took to the road after lunch and stopped in at a coffee shop to take in a photography show. Emerging artist, Lana Turner attended an art marketing workshop I taught last year and was inspired enough to go all out and display her work in an alternative gallery setting. Pictured above is Lana with a few of her photographic images. Her work is on exhibit at Noa Noa Coffeeshop in Golden until March 31st. She has many beautiful photographs in the show and I understand she sold quite a few at her opening reception. Congratuations to Lana!
Paid a visit to a friend and artist Sandy Marvin. Checked out her new studio she is renting in downtown Denver. The studio space is situated in a building where all of the other rooms have been made into studios as well. The place reminds me of my college days. You can feel a buzz of creative energy in the air.
