Carmen Beecher featured artist for January
ART AND ANTIQUE STUDIO & GALLERY
JANUARY 2013
“I’m just an artist that enjoys my job”
That’s how Carmen Beecher feels about being an artist. She likes what she does every day. This Florida
descendant feels a strong emotional connection to her home state. Although she
spent twenty years living in other places—even other countries—she eventually
returned to Florida
to live and to paint. She worked for the Air Force as an Illustrator and
Graphic Artist and won awards for both her illustrations and her military
newspaper comic strips. She did murals for the US Space Program and her
paintings are in the Pentagon’s Air Force Art Collection. Freelance work
includes book illustrations, Mastercard credit card designs, and magazine cover
illustrations. Her murals adorn the walls of private residences, businesses and
a church. Much of her life has been spent surrounded by water: Bermuda, the
Azores, and now Satellite
Beach.
To “recharge her batteries” every year, Beecher goes on an artists’ retreat in the Smoky Mountains
with her painting group, Pieces of Eight. The inspiration for her “From Highland
to Island” exhibit is the contrast between the beauty of our beaches and wildlife and
the vistas of the Smokies. Time spent in the mountains is used for plein air
painting, sightseeing, and idea-generating.
With the worldwide web has come the Daily Painting phenomenon, which
populates online venues with accessible, reasonably priced small paintings. Beecher enthusiastically
joined the movement with a website, blog, Etsy Shop, and presence on three
Daily Painter sites. She has made the internet her marketplace by posting three
or four small paintings a week and selling through Etsy.com. The pace is hectic
and requires careful planning, and at a time in her life when most people are
taking it easy she finds herself busier than ever
Beecher won Best of Show
in the National League of American Pen Women Biennial Art Competition 2008. She
felt strongly about her inclusion in the
Art and Addiction 2008 Juried Art Exhibition, Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine. Her work, River of Tears, about her father’s struggles with alcohol was selected for exhibition and included in
the book Addiction and Art published
in 2010 by Johns Hopkins University Press. She garnered Best of Show at the Art
& Antique Studio’s Art in Miniature 2009 Show and exhibited in the 2010
“Transformations” exhibit at the Brevard Museum of Art in Melbourne, Florida.
International Artist Magazine published an article about Beecher’s art and her process in their
February/March 2012 issue, and she appeared in Space Coast Living Magazine in
October 2012.
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