Beverly Alice Nash

Jolanta and Linda in Prague
oil on canvas
48 x 36 in.

I began my career as an artist working with fibers. Learning to make my own colors through hand-dyeing was the catalyst to my becoming an artist. I currently work in acrylics and oil on canvas, painting what I see around me everyday. I think in color and use color and form to express my vision of the things in this world. I am a representative painter, but I lean into abstraction. I simplify forms and alter colors to emphasize the nature of the things I see around me every day.

Lately I find myself focused on portraits of my friends and family. I like to paint people I know because I can penetrate the surface and suggest the temperament and personality of the person I’m portraying. Its important that I get the person’s likeness, not an exact likeness, but I have to see them on the canvas.

Also lately I’ve been exploring self image and self presentation in women, especially that of older women. As we age we deal with changes in body and image. As we come to grips with our changing bodies and struggle with self presentation we, paradoxically, become less visible to the outside world. But we are still the same selves. How do we reconcile this disparity between our selves and our image?

© Beverly Alice Nash