Bio
Chris Beck is a young man in love with making art, with the rawest of materials and with deepest respect for the artistic mentors he encountered when he hit the backroads of his native state of Alabama in 2004 when he began to collect art for gifts for friends and family.
En route, he found and fell in love with R. A. Miller, a Georgia outsider artist whose simple and abundant work he says “blew my mind.” Until then, he thought art had to be images on canvas or watercolors, “something that had to fit in a hallway in a frame.” As a young boy in Selma, Alabama, he started trying to develop artistic ability via crayons, magic markers, charcoal, chalk. He tried various mediums, but couldn’t make sense of it, noting that “I had the desire to create, but nothing felt right.”
Completing his degree in English at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, he did not pursue art directly, just through collecting it. In a few years, after having met some of his mentors such as Miller, Charlie Lucas, and more, he began to weld, to build art from all kinds of grundgy materials, in particular rusted tin, metals, and discarded wood. His life totally changed from that point forward. As he puts it, “I saw rusted, dirty art that you want to love on. It’s not ever what I thought art would be.” Some of the outsider artists he met had traveled to Paris, but had never forgotten who they were or what they were about. They worked with materials they had and gave simple objects new life.
Chris has been making his own art actively for about three years, with special interest in making vintage clothing from rusted tin, painting the front side to look as if someone still inhabits the clothing. He also loves making contemporary abstract pieces that fit the profile of 20th-century art. It’s outsider art. It’s pop art. It has sophistication. It is made of simple and treacherous materials. Chris is on his way to pursuing a distinctive vision of his own.
