About Beverly Bigwood
Award-winning Artist Beverly Bigwood (Bigwood Art) received the highest compliment an artist can receive in their career; Beverly’s artwork was stolen from a Westwood Gallery along with a Miro, a Dali, and a Lichtenstein, who Beverly considers as one of her inspirations.
A prolific artist, Beverly’s artwork has hung in over 100 solo and group gallery exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe including Guidonia – Montecelio, Rome, Italy; Von Grabill Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ; Seidman Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, Patton Duval Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, Discovery Galleries in Culver City, CA and the DeVoron Gallery in the Los Angeles Pacific Design Center, among many others.
Her artwork has also adorned the walls of Universal Studios, Spago’s, Fred Hayman & Giorigo’s, Oracle Corporation, Borders Books & Music, Palm Springs Art Museum, and Fred Segal’s, to name a few.
Her creative designs were commissioned by DuPar’s Restaurant for an award-winning menu design, El Cholo Restaurant’s 60th Anniversary, Seattle’s Best Coffee, and 38 illustrations commissioned for a “Coffee en Vogue” specialty food publication in Munich, Germany, and numerous other print publications seen worldwide.
Beverly’s formal art education began in Massachusetts at the prestigious School of the Worcester Art Museum. She began her career as an artiste du papier creating whimsical folk-art pieces in archival Canson paper to a huge success commercially and privately. Loving art in all mediums, she also creates in oil, acrylics, stone, wood, metal, and clay. She has never stopped learning and expanding her knowledge of art.
Her list of international and domestic collectors include such notable art collectors as President of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun; former New York Metropolitan Museum of Art Curator and Commissioner of Cultural Affairs under Mayor Koch, Henry Geldzahler; Restaurateur/Chef, Wolfgang Puck; Film Directors, Richard Donner, Jon Peters, and Garry Marshall; Actors Linda Gray and Judd Hirsch; Granddaughter of Dr. Armand Hammer, Casey Hammer; The Honorable Senator Henry Waxman; and Prinzenessin Irene Zu Schleswig-Holstein, among numerous others.
A strong believer in giving back to the community, Beverly has donated her time and artwork to numerous charities over the course of her career. Philanthropic art donations include the LA Free Clinic, LA Magic Johnson Foundation, and the 12th Annual Playboy Jazz Festival where her artwork has graced brochures, tote bags, posters, banners, programs, t-shirts, and other items. She also designed 125 drawings for a children’s coloring book and three gift cards used internationally for Starlight Foundation.
An Angel logo she created for Capital Drug’s new Alternative & Traditional Healthcare Division’s was displayed on a billboard over Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood for one year.
More recently, Beverly was hired by the City of Burbank to create, design, and execute over 55 animal motifs for 275 feet of fence and nine corresponding metal gates for “Urban Meadows,” a Public Art Project located on Kling Street. The fence was used as the backdrop for a Liberty Mutual commercial in 2015.
She then branched into mosaic tile work for another City of Burbank Public Arts Commission for an Olive Street entryway entitled, “Mii Amo.” This 123 square foot passageway was designed and executed with exquisite custom ceramic tiles which include a mosaic waterfall that cascades down the face of the risers.
Developing a love of sculpture and ceramics as a result of these experiences, Beverly began creating more personal three-dimensional pieces which currently grace her home.
As a result of her expertise, she was accepted into the 3D Group, an organization of mixed media artists living and working in the South Bay.
As a member of the Palos Verdes Art Center, she was involved as the Chairperson for the Exhibition Committee, a Board of Director Member, and an Advisory Committee Member for the past two years. Although an ongoing member, she has relinquished her corporate duties to re-enter the art world as an artist.
After almost five years creating in a three-dimensional universe, Beverly has returned to her first love, the sensuality of oil paint on canvas. Her past work has had a strong stylistic emphasis reminiscent of Indian, African, and Caribbean influences which she attributes to her extensive international traveling experiences.
STATEMENT
"I have returned to my first love; the sensuality of oil paint on canvas using figurative expressionism as a means to share my perception of the human condition.
To me the human form, whether face or figure, is a vessel which contains abundant variety and ingenuity, and allows me, through my expressions, to communicate different ideas and philosophies I have and wish to share with the world.
Displaying the body enables me to convey the full articulation of being human with all its beauty, vigor, nuances and perversities. It allows me to shed light into all aspects of emotions and produce a greater understanding of what it really means to live.
My recent paintings are about relationships and those intangible substances that either cement us together, or push us apart. It is an attempt to personify the need in humans to form symbiotic arrangements where two usually incredibly dissimilar organisms form a close union or some type of cooperative association.
The countless combinations of these unions, including the safe and sweet, enhancing and evolving, coarse and complicated, or vulgar and abusive, is the vast, diverse and often profound subject matter that now propels me back into the painting world.
Relationships have always fascinated me: the life long dance between families and friends; the passion and intensity of lovers; those rare moments when a single word or deed can reverse the polarity from friend to enemy; that energy that attracts and entices us into a communication to reveal and to trust; or disgusts us, repulses us, humiliates us, degrades us or demoralizes us.
A very fine line separates love from hate and at times its position is quite flexible and incredibly erratic. That amorphous, breathing entity consumes my art. It is a mirror of society. The highs and lows. The simplicity and complexities.
Each work of art has its own psychology. Life is art waiting to be applied to canvas. The stillness of one image allows the viewer to pause and become reflective. Every thought, breath, action, response is just another brush stroke -- A presentation of a catalyst for self discovery or analysis.
I am, through my art, a social commentator where everything influences me; movies, TV, radio, conversations, dreams, newspapers, magazines, photographs, textiles, color, nature, people, animals. The written word has in some cases provided a title for a painting not yet created. Model bodies in fashion layouts inspire a tension or a flow that transposes itself onto my canvases. Even pornography’s sexuality and provocative allure is a fuel for the sensuality of oils.
Through its composition and color, a painting can evoke emotions and sensations that were once as hidden as the blankness of the canvas. It’s a wonderful power. I love, and am challenged by, the magic of taking a blank white canvas and with a bit of imagination and pigment, creating an image that can emotionally engage the viewer: that within its one defining frame has the potential effect of a blockbuster movie or a best-selling novel.
They are a bit of a movie - a series of frames of a long and complicated story that the viewer becomes part of. Seduced to be the principal player or becoming a supporting cast member in the imaginative narrative that has no beginning or end.
I’ve had a very interesting, if convoluted, life. It has been a blessing, mostly, and I share those experiences of goodness and kindness and beauty through my art. They are my vehicles for rebirth. They are my meditations on the metaphysical. A mirror of the subconscious.
A portal into being. A reflection. A recognition. An opening into the void.
A gift." --Beverly Bigwood
