John Beard (artist)

John Beard (born 1943) is a Welsh artist and painter born in Aberdare, Wales,[1] he is now based in Sydney, Lisbon and London.

Contents

Life and art

John Beard won the Welsh National Art Scholarship in 1962 at just 19 years of age. After training at the Swansea College of Art, he completed further studies at the University of London and the Royal College of Art, London.

In 1965 he won the British Arts Council International Prize and Commission, and has since won many residences and commission at various Universities and establishments around the globe. After various teaching posts in the United Kingdom, Beard arrived in Western Australia in 1983, to become Senior Lecturer, Head of Painting, Curtin University, Perth. After resigning in 1989, Beard traveled extensively, living and exhibiting in cities such as New York, Madrid, Lisbon and London before establishing a Sydney base in 1997. When the Tate Gallery opened its St Ives gallery in Cornwall, 1998, John Beard was one of the first artists to be offered a residency and exhibition there.[2]

Since the mid-1990's John Beard's paintings have explored the fugitive nature of reality. While living in Sintra on the Atlantic coast of Portugal, Beard made the "Adaga" series of paintings which were studies of a massive off-shore rock which constantly changed its character in the surging sea and shifting light.
This same investigation led Beard into portraiture - except that he is not interested in painting portraits as such, but in examining the nature of portraiture and its implications for the epistemology of human recognition.

—Paul McGillick , After Image[3]

Selected collections

Selected awards and fellowships

Selected reviews, articles and essays

See also

Notes

External links and references

Awards
Preceded by
Marcus Wills
Archibald Prize
2007
for Portrait of Janet Laurence
Succeeded by
Del Kathryn Barton