Allan Bealy
Brooklyn, USA
Website
allanbealy.blogspot.com
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your work?
I consider myself primarily a storyteller. I try to explore emotion and dream states with unexpected visual orientations and textural juxtapositions. I like to use a muted palette and build up the work on a substrate of stained and distressed papers and envelopes.
Those backgrounds can hang around the studio for days or weeks before being permanently hidden by layers of collage and decollage. The cuts and the decisions I make with paper and the way the image comes together is always surprising — part dream, part mysterious other. The collages function like journal entries and track my moods. With some of the simpler pieces repeat motifs can work like semaphore, a shortcut to understanding. Like anything, the viewer carries the key to their own interpretation.
What inspires you?
The seasons. Walking and observing. An affinity for this earth and distress in seeing what we are putting it through. The small tiny bits that are misplaced and forgotten. Memory. Looking and seeing.
Can you speak about your process?
My small studio is itself a sort of collage. I slip in every morning and see what needs to be rearranged. What can be glued down or torn apart and reassembled. I spend a lot of time distressing my materials…staining, sanding, folding. I fill folders with salvaged images, bits of color and shape and texture, mostly from the mid 20th century. I start a lot of new work that will hang around, unfinished, for days or weeks. Backgrounds are usually a hidden collage of stained envelopes and endpapers. I only use vintage sources and content. Contemporary media gives me a rash.
How did you become interested in art?
My old favorite aunt was a hobbyist painter. A particularly poor one, she nevertheless pointed me in the right direction, showering me with unqualified enthusiasm and acceptance. A lack of any other overriding ambition led me to art school. I met the right teachers and mentors and found my path.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
A quote from the last page of William Gaddis’s magisterial work The Recognitions seems appropriate and haunts me.. “He was the only person caught in the collapse, and afterward, most of his work was recovered too, and it is still spoken of, when it is noted, with high regard, though seldom played.”
What advice do you have for younger artists?
Read. Criticism, reviews, biographies. Knowing what an artist’s intention was is so important. Respect your materials. Understand what their limits are and then push a little bit in the opposite direction. Use social media but try not to have it use you.
