City Art Gallery is celebrating 40 years in business! And we are celebrating throughout the year with spotlights on the artists who have helped shape this gallery. North Carolina native, John Beerman, is widely known for his quiet, luminous landscapes that he has spent his career painting and perfecting. Born in Greensboro, Beerman studied at the Rhode Island School of Design followed by the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
“I believe artists are, in their own way, working to heal a broken world. My work is an effort to imagine and translate the transcendental – to search for the heart of the matter, something beneath the surface, where truth resides.”
Recently, Beerman has taken a turn inward, entering “a psychic space that is by turns surprising, playful, difficult, and deeply rewarding.” Elements of collage and subtle figures surface within the canvases, offering hints of the familiar even as the work moves fully into abstraction.
His 35-year career has garnered recognition at the highest levels of fine art. He has received several awards and fellowships, including the Pollack-Krasner Foundation Award and the Yaddo Artist Colony Fellowship. His work is in the collection of numerous museums across the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.
