In my work I embrace the challenge of recreating the world on canvas and paper. But “recreating” is only a beginning. I am often surprised by the stories that emerge and the resulting work is often more surreal and engaging than I anticipate. Portraits are rarely straightforward and still lifes are often “not so still” with objects falling, floating and flying. Fascinated by reflections which create worlds within worlds, I depict objects and rooms seen through the distortion of curved surfaces. The work invites you to enter into a world that is at once strange and familiar.
My ongoing drawing series, SELF, created over four decades, is a series of self-portraits that have become an unexpected lifetime journey. Using the vocabulary of my own forms and features, I bear witness to the changes of time, offering a broader experience of being human. In a new series of layered drawings on translucent mylar I explore the past and my family heritage. Other drawing series – Portraits of Glaciers, Dead Horse Bay, and Ugly Fruit – address concern for our environment, stressed by the climate crisis.
When I create, I can defy gravity, question the nature of beauty, seek to portray the character of a person or a glacier. Sometimes I think of myself as a writer who writes with graphite, pigment and oils. As I shed light on my subjects, they reflect my vision and reveal my stories.
BIOGRAPHY
Fran Beallor is an artist, independent curator and arts educator. She had a blast showing her 366 self-portraits from 2020, and other examples of her ongoing series, SELF in a Solo Exhibition at El Barrio’s Artspace PS 109 in East Harlem, NYC in 2022. Over 550 drawings, paintings and prints were displayed.
Beallor has been the subject of radio, in-print and online interviews, including one in Art Spiel in conjunction with her Solo Show. Feature articles and reviews have appeared in the American Arts Quarterly, American Artist Magazine, and others. In 2020, her painting, “Circle Dance” won the Morgan Library and Museum’s online Portrait contest. She received a Greenshields Grant for Excellence in Realist Art.
Beallor has a long history of exhibiting her paintings, drawings and prints in NYC and beyond. Solo and group shows include the Morris Museum, the Butler Art Institute, the Williams Center for the Arts and Denise Bibro Gallery. Corporate, public and private collections include the 9/11 Museum and the Copelouzos Museum in Athens, Greece. Beallor also enjoys curating. Her upcoming curation for Hudson Guild in Chelsea will address the Climate Crisis.
Beallor attended Antioch College, the Art Students League and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. She teaches art to all ages, specializing in portfolio development for high school and college. Former students attend top art programs including RISD, Pratt Paris, Carnegie Mellon and SAIC. Also, LaGuardia, Frank Sinatra, A&D and other arts high schools in New York City, her home town where she lives and works. Learn more about Beallor's work in a series of video interviews at dailymotion.com/search/franbeallor.