Featured Artist Bea Roberts

Delightfully eccentric, the mixed media art of artist Beatrice Roberts exudes a playful energy. Enjoy more of her work by visiting her website.

 

 

I am a mixed media artist from Nottingham in the United Kingdom and my style of work runs from quirky to surreal.

 

 

I started drawing and painting when I was about ten years old after seeing pastel portrait artists working at a holiday resort I used to visit with my parents. Instead of passing my time at the funfair, I stood for hours just watching the artists. I was mesmerized.

 

 

I then started to create my own art (mostly portraits of pop stars) although a little later I would draw my classmates in coloured pencils to earn some pocket money. I had my first exhibition at a local library at age fourteen. Over forty years later, I am still drawing portraits!

 

 

I didn’t go straight into fine art, however. I earned a degree in fashion knitwear design, and spent the first part of my working life designing and writing knitting patterns for newsstand knitting magazines as well as for some yarn manufacturers on a freelance basis. I did this until my son came along. I took some time off from work to bring him up and later did the same with my daughter.

 

 

I work from imagination and intuition, creating strange people and weird animals. I almost always use mixed media, whether that be paint, collage, watercolours, drawing pens, inks or found objects.

 

 

Very rarely do I use only one medium in an artwork. I find I that using different mediums together adds exuberance and a freshness to the art as they look, act and feel different from each other. This also adds extra energy to my artwork.

 

 

I work in “fits and starts,” creating numerous artworks over a period of a few months, then not painting at all for a few more. Maybe I burn myself out with all that activity! I always come back to creating though. In fact, I am going through frenetic period of creativity at the moment.

 

 

I consider myself an outsider artist. This is because I have worked mostly outside of the established art world by selling direct to collectors via the internet since I started creating fine art again seriously in the early 2000s. These days I find the physical effort of putting up and taking down exhibitions just too exhausting, so I will leave it to the younger folk!

 

 

My artworks are hanging in private collections all over the world. I have also had quite a few pieces of my artwork bought for the sets of television productions and films.

 

Artist Bea Roberts invites you to follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

 

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