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John Beerman
John Beerman is a renowned painter, North Carolina native, and current Hillsborough resident whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. John received his degree from Rhode Island School of Design and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
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.
Among other public collections, his work is at the Duke University Cancer Center, the Duke Endowment, and the North Carolina Governor’s mansion. He also has completed several public commissioned works, including an 85-foot mural for the Milstein Family Heart Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City and a painting for the UNC-Rex Hospital in Raleigh.
Artist Statement:
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.
In my recent paintings, l've begun to allow more of the unknown to guide me, deliberately cultivating an expansive inner world. It feels like putting on headphones and entering a psychic space that is by turns surprising, playful, difficult, and deeply rewarding. I am singing my song – translating it into color and form. The song reshapes itself again and again until it reveals an expression I could not have anticipated. I go where there is no roadmap, opening pathways to new possibilities.
Each painting begins with color, laid down freely, almost as a first breath. From there, a dialogue emerges – hard against soft, cool against warm, opaque against translucent-an attempt to unify opposites. The process is guided by intuition, unfolding slowly, until an image takes form. If the work succeeds, it resonates with a mystery that feels both discovered and inevitable.
Education, Fellowships, and Grants:
2014 - Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant; also 1998
1984 - Yaddo Fellowship, Saratoga Springs, NY; Studio Assistant to Alfonso Ossorio, Wainscott, NY
1983 - Studio Assistant to Jasper Johns, Stony Point, NY
1982 - Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; BFA; Studio Assistant to Cletus Johnson, Garnerville, NY
1980 - Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME
Public Collections:
Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC
Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA
Blowing Rock Art and History Museum, Blowing Rock, NC
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Burroughs Welcome, North Carolina
Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC
Cleveland Art Museum
Chase Manhattan Bank, New York
Dow Jones and Company Incorporated, New York
Duke Endowment, Charlotte, NC
Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, ME
Governor’s Mansion, Raleigh, NC
Governor’s Mansion, Albany, NY
Greenville Museum of Art, Greenville, NC
Johnson & Johnson, New Jersey
Maslow Collection, Marywood University, Scranton, PA
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, New York
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Milstein Family Heart Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York
Morgan Stanley, New York
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
St. Luke’s Hospital, New York
Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts, Winston-Salem, NC
Time Warner, Inc., New York
UNC-Rex Hospital, Raleigh, NC
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York