Her most recent show, titled "My Daily Obsession," is currently on display at the Art in the Main gallery, located in the Main City Library at 210 East 400 South in Salt Lake.
"I think that it's the small things that really give us pleasure," said Beesley, mentioning a recent painting that included a small hula doll her husband bought in Hawaii. "I used to paint serious things, but I must be in a lighter mood or something because now I really enjoy paintings that make me smile."
Beesley is also intrigued by the complicated nature of the small items she memorializes in her paintings, focusing on unusual surfaces like glass and paying attention to small details that might be overlooked by the casual observer.
In fact, her entire shift to still lifes from earlier work with landscapes and fish came from a piece of broken mirror, which she found and brought home so that she and her son could use it to arrange still lifes.
"At first we were just playing around," said Beesley. "But the more I set up, the more I got involved with it. I've really become fascinated."
Unlike most artists, Beesley approaches her still lifes slightly from above rather than straight ahead, a reflection of her 5-foot-2 height looking down at a low table that she sets up in her studio at home.
Because of this angle Beesley is always careful to drape the table with newsprint, mostly a page or two featuring a wide range of Sunday comics. Sometimes, however, the table covering can have a more direct link to the painting, such as the skiing brochures in "Apres Ski" or the Chinese-language sports page draped beneath the Buddha figurines in "Sports Fan."
"I picked up a Chinese newspaper in San Fransisco and was amused by how much our cultures seem to be merging," said Beesley. "There's crazy little things everywhere you look."
Since her focus is on daily life Beesley always has a constant stream of ideas, with family members always bringing her more items they think might look good in a painting. Beesley also likes to have several paintings going at once, with one being finished just as two or three more are in their early stages.
According to Beesley, the system also helps keep her artistic inspiration flowing.
"The art kind of feeds on itself," she said. "New ideas always creep up as I'm working on something else."
Not that she minds.
"When I'm painting I can forget about anything else," she said. "And when I'm not painting, I'm thinking about painting."
Beesley hopes to continue expanding her artistic horizons, already planning on attempting larger watercolor works. Rather than her current 16x20- inch canvases, a common size for many watercolor artists, Beesley hopes to stretch out to 30x40 inches or even 40x60 inches.
"If you take things that seem inconsequential and blow them up, they become monumental," said Beesley in anticipation. "I'll end up with an ice cream cone three feet wide."
jwardell@davisclipper.com
Post a Comment
