Collage
History
“Paul Beattie Was an Artist of Rare Perception
From his early intuitive collages to his cosmic drawings and paintings, he offered glimpses of a world unseen except by him.
A little more time, money, and a little more humanity, Paul would have been rich and famous; But we didn’t know him that way.
We knew a better man, a devoted artist and a kindly counterpoint in today’s maddening art world.”
Henry Hopkins
Director, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1988
Collage Planet #23, 1981, mixed media, 12 5/8 x 13 inches, CP-72.23
Cloudscape #36, 1965, paper collage, 10 3/4 x 10 inches, C-28.11
Throughout his artistic career Paul Beattie made collages, most prolifically in the 1960s and the 1980s. Often employing printers’ inks and natural dyes such as blackberry juice to stain his materials, his early collages reflect the organic shapes of his Sonoma County surroundings, depicting cloud banks, rolling hills, and rising moons.
Over the next several decades Paul continued to explore the medium of collage. Influenced by his study of astronomy he developed a planetary series consisting of an orb shape affixed to a painted background. These orbs range in size from 1 inch to 48 inches in diameter. On some, although his application of color is delicate and understated, the visual impact remains strong. The planetary motif evolved into a series that incorporated brighter colors and mixed media such as sand, string, metal or pieces of cork.
Planet # 29, 1981, acrylic on board, 3 5/8 inches in diameter, CP-72.119
Collage # 52, 1980, paper collage, 4 3/4 x 4 3/4 inches, C-28.97
He continued to develop the genre, creating a series of collages that is more architectural in its structure and harkens back to his love of abstraction. In these he incorporates other mediums such as sandpaper and surplus litho prints. Constantly exploring and evolving as an artist, Paul’s research into space science influenced the color, form and structure of his work. These collages were prescient, produced before the higher resolution images of the Hubble Space Telescope revolutionized humanity’s understanding of the universe.