about e.beck

I have loved art for as long as I can remember. I enjoy drawing and coloring, painting and pottery, crafts and collage, assemblage and sewing, beading and building. I studied art history in college. I have a Master’s Degree in education. I did some Post-Bac work in drawing and painting. I have spent most of my adult life being an elementary school teacher or a mom. It was when my youngest child started kindergarten that I finally and completely threw myself entirely into my art.

My paintings generally reflect the happy outlook that I have on life. I don’t think I could create an angst ridden, moody piece. I tend towards bright colors. Green, orange and dark pink are my favorites, though, I’m also very partial to red, blue and yellow. My apologies go out to the under appreciated purple.

There are a number of themes that I frequently explore in my work: flowers, hearts, Mona Lisa, nests, trees, branches.  I also have recurring artistic elements: the dictionary, print, letters, numbers, symbols, bingo cards, game pieces, maps, as well as odd bits of hardware and ephemera: the odder, the better!

In our every day life, we are surrounded by such vast quantities of print that we frequently don’t notice it…or, conversely, we know what it says without even looking. Being bombarded with print is a fact of life. I, personally, LOVE print. I like the fonts and the letters and the words and the stories. I find every bit of the process from individual letters to completed novels to billboards to hang tags on your new pants to be enticing, interesting, worth noticing. To capitalize on this “love of letters,” I like to use text as texture in my work. I use printed pages like dictionary pages and snips of books. I also like to add large bold print that is just regimented letters and symbols, not words. To add this textural text, I use both stencils and stamps.

I have a few oddball bits that I frequently add to my art. Vintage Bingo cards are a favorite. I don’t recall ever having a huge fondness for playing Bingo, but I think the look of a Bingo card is the epitome of printing beauty. Blocks and squares and letters and numbers line up pristinely on a card….and sometime they are in color! The joy! I think in my work the Bingo cards are icons to the joy of letters and numbers and tidy rows. Bingo cards might even be shorthand for all the letters and numbers and symbols and words that we see, but don’t notice in our day to day lives.

Art is a great joy to me. Thank you for letting me share that joy with you.