Kelly Beeman

A Fantastical Life

- Evan Pricco

Long before the Great Pause of 2020, we had planned to speak with Kelly Beeman. Her watercolor works and paintings are stories of domestic life, the little dramas and fantasies we create about the past that almost feel cinematic. She paints solitary moments, as well as familial bonding, scenes of the recent few months we had longed for, or maybe been desperate to escape. Amazingly, our daily lives are Beeman’s universe, symbolic interactions we have with the self and others that are dramatic and internalized, yet feel so common. We spoke to Beeman from her Brooklyn apartment a few weeks after a studio visit, now in a world so altered, but immersed in artwork that felt so perfectly prophetic.

Evan Pricco: Asking how you are doing seems so different now. I want to make sure I ask, “How are you doing?” and have an answer on record.

Kelly Beeman: It’s pouring rain. I’m inside like everyone else right now. It’s kind of weird that it hasn’t changed my routine that much. It’s like the world around me has just sort of shifted into absolute craziness, but individually things are still the same. I’m not going to my studio as much, but theoretically, I could walk there. I could work there because I’m alone. Then, in terms of my work, I’ve had people saying things like, “Everyone is kind of in your world now, stuck at home and in these weird domestic situations.”

I do feel like much of your work defines the mood of these times.