Greg Beecham
Unique gestures
There are two signatures on every painting, each identifying the artist in unique ways. The first is the literal signature, which most often appears in the lower left or right. The second is less obvious, until you know what to look for, and then it’s hard to miss. It’s this signature that will allow a viewer to identify an artist’s work from across the room—the painting style is simply unmistakable.
Wyoming wildlife painter Greg Beecham has two very strong signatures. The first is a simple “G BEECHAM” but with a stylized “EE” missing vertical stems. The second signature can be seen in his composition, his color and his values, any of which will make a collector beam from across the room, “Hey, that’s a Beecham.”
“I think of signature just as the way you apply the paint, or the style in which you work. I feel like I’m very lucky to have such a recognizable signature to my work. It comes from just painting and learning how you like to work,” the artist says. “It also keeps me painting what I want to paint, as opposed to painting the same things over and over.”
Painting the same things repeatedly is a real pitfall for professional artists, one that Beecham avoids by painting whatever he wants, whether the market is ready for it or not. For his new show at Legacy Gallery in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Beecham will be showing
Landing Among the Boulders, a 32-inch-wide painting of a desert grasshopper—a far cry from the bison, wolves and moose that are normally found in Jackson Hole galleries. “At the Prix de West, there was a discussion about proactive and reactive artists, and Tucker Smith and I decided we are reactive painters, in that we let the animals tells us what to paint next, which is probably why no one can guess what my next subject will be,” Beecham says. “For this one, my wife and I were on a hike in Arizona and this little guy landed near us and I immediately thought, ‘Hey, this could be interesting.’ It was certainly fun to paint.”
Beecham will have some of those Jackson Hole staples as well, including wolves and a fox. In Alpha, the artist offers a close-up view of a wolf as it seems to stare down its prey. “Wolves are not peace-loving creatures. They have a wild look to them that you can see in their eyes. It’s a look of complete contempt. I had one about 200 yards from my driveway once and even that far away you could see the predatory look it has,” Beecham says. “For Alpha, I did it at almost two times over lifesize so you can really see the wild look it has.”
Beecham is a master at light and color, and his works frequently push him to challenging and technical places that require him to explore the limits of his paints. “Many years ago David A. Leffel said artists should create sculpture with paint. I was already doing that when I heard it, but it validated my work when I heard him say it,” Beecham says. “My paintings are all about texture and edges, and capturing that sense of life, and those are things that are part of my signature. They offer solutions to critical questions artists have as they paint.”