John Beardman b. 1937

John Beardman began painting at the age of nineteen and has been a devout practitioner of "action painting" for over six decades. Inspired by Abstract Expressionist artists such as Willem de Kooning, Beardman uses a linear framework to add structure to his painterly marks and often collages directly onto his canvases, pushing the compositions into a sculptural realm. For much of his career, Beardman’s subject has been the natural landscape, particularly that of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia where the artist had his studio from 1992 to 2016.

Beardman was born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1937 and attended Oberlin College, Southern Illinois University and the Sorbonne in Paris. He has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at galleries throughout the United States and internationally. His work is represented in the collections of the Detroit Institue of Arts and the Cranbrook Academy of Art. The artist continues to live and work in Pennsylvania.