Below you will find one of these paintings titled Open Sweep of Country.  It rained a lot while in England.

Winter Light

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!

Southwest Art Magazine, November 2008 issue

Artist to Watch

Bonnie Gangelhoff

Kathy Beekman evokes the spare landscapes of Edward Hopper

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.”

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.”

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 8th I found myself teaching another class at the Foothills Art Center in Golden.  Here is a line up of a few of the students painting their hearts out.  The three hour class was titled “Seriously Long Paintings” and the class participants created some very dynamic paintings.

I have not seen the ground since November.  It just keeps snowing.  Here is a view outside my studio window looking smack dab into a snow drift.

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.