My works are portraits of animals viewed through the hazy lens of human perception. By obscuring my animal portraits underneath abstraction, I am exploring not only our vague perceptions of the animal, but our negligent social views of animals and nature. Particularly, our habits of treating them as less than, throw-away, or barely above common objects. I feel we give our fellow creatures far less credit than they deserve-they are more intelligent and more complicated than we may be capable of (or comfortable) knowing. I draw and paint them as a celebration of their existence and to express a hope that we can learn to embrace their continued survival as a necessity to our own.
“I hope that each time I cover over one of my animal portraits that it is a jarring or shocking experience for people. It definitely can be for me. I usually end up liking the finished result better. Maybe it’s a bit like the Japanese ceramics technique of Kintsugi in which a broken thing becomes even more beautiful.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
TRICIA BEAL
Tricia Beal is a contemporary animal artist. She works primarily in the fields of drawing and painting. She has always had a love of mixing media and often combines both drawing and painting techniques into her works. Tricia was born in Houston, Texas. She has been interested in making art for her entire life and started drawing at a young age. She graduated with a BFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of North Texas in 2008. A bit lost after her foray into academics, she continued to create through many life disruptions including several cross-country moves, job changes, personal injuries, and the birth of her son. Over the course of that journey her work has settled back into her lifelong love of wildlife, nature, and the subsequent ecological issues that go hand in hand with those topics.
Tricia has exhibited her work with Light Grey Art Lab, a gallery space out of Minneapolis, MN and Fusion Gallery online. She also had the great pleasure of exploring Northern Iceland with Light Grey Art Lab as part of their 2019 Iceland Residency program. She hopes to continue to have opportunities to integrate more exploration and adventure in nature into her life in the future! She enjoys several hobbies outside of art including keeping aquariums and plants, photography, Scuba diving, hiking, and an obsession with MINI Coopers.
She currently resides just outside of Kansas City, with her husband, son, cats and dog.
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