NANCY BEASLEY

 

Biography: 


Nancy Beasley was born in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in Dallas, Texas.  She started drawing and painting at a very young age and can remember her favorite Christmas gifts were paints, markers and paper.  With a background as multi-faceted and complex as the sources of her inspiration, Nancy holds a BA in Political Science from Texas A&M, and earned an MBA from St. Thomas University. Essentially self-taught, Nancy spent ten years in studio critique classes at the Glassell School of Art, part of the Museum of Fine Art, in Houston. Her personal and academic interests incorporate both art and science, including an enthusiasm for traveling through the small towns, mountains and deserts of Texas and New Mexico with her son, Zeke, and her two Papillion dogs.  She continues to work and live in both Taos and Dallas.

 

About her work: 


Nancy's current work is inspired by the fading small town architecture found in the Texas Panhandle and Northern New Mexico.  Her palette is often monochromatic and her style minimalist, not unlike artist Agnes Martin.  Nancy believes that artistic expression is the most elegant means of confronting and making sense of transitions, obstacles and reinventions. Her paintings are ways of articulating the emotions and explorations of those exquisite moments that can either define or confound one's human experience. Accordingly, her inspirations have been fading architecture, nature and its transformations, pregnancy and motherhood, illness and recovery, love and separation.  

 

Each painting is created individually, as a remembrance and beatification of the vision, process or experience that inspired it. Many of her works, such as the Facing a Fork in the Road series and Passing Storm, offer content specific to the progress of a journey: roads, rivers, pathways and movement from one condition to another.  


In addition to her adoration of the rich natural beauty of the Southwest, she is also inspired by the feminine, represented in her landscapes as well as the continuing Women series. She hadn't painted in a year when she began the series, which represented a dramatic challenge in itself: frightening and invigorating. These paintings became perhaps her most symbolic works, exploring the gift of new life as an implacable mystery - something that is at once beautiful and joyful, yet bold and complex. She notes, "My work presents the transition into motherhood as my own ultimate transition and my most glorious reinvention.  I feel that my paintings are inseparable from my personal experiences, yet these are the awesome experiences of transformation that enlighten and inspire us all. I sincerely hope that these moments I have captured will delight my audience; essentially providing the contentment and satisfaction that I experience at the completion of each work."

 

Recognitions: 


Nancy's work can be found in numerous private and corporate collections throughout the United States.  She is also represented by galleries in both Texas and New Mexico.  Some of her corporate clients include: Baylor Hospital and Dallas Diagnostic Associates, Dallas, TX.