A ROMANTIC VIEW
With a life-long passion to celebrate nature’s beauty in the world around him, and an early disability which led to a focus on art, Roger Beale AO developed a practice depicting timeless landscapes and glorious floral subjects in a rich and romantic classical style. Erin Irwin writes.
To view the works of Canberra-based artist Roger Beale AO is to step into another age, the rich pastures and rolling hills blooming as if they had been called forth by a Wordsworth poem. A master of light, Beale handles the intensity of the Australian sun with ease, casting it across swaying poppies or catching it as it filters through clouds in the gloaming.
Beale has travelled widely, in some part due to a past life as a senior public servant – many may recognise him as the former Secretary of Environment and Heritage. Since 2004 he has been a full-time artist, though he has been exhibiting professionally since 1984, and has had a sketchbook in hand throughout his life. He won his first art prize at 12 years old, dominating the Brisbane Sunday Mail Art Prize (Junior Section). “My father was a keen amateur watercolorist and we haunted galleries when I was a child and teenager”, says the artist, who is grateful to have been introduced to his passion so early in life.
Art was particularly important to Beale as a child, as a bout of polio has left a lifelong impact. “As a child disabled by polio, drawing and painting gave me a way of exploring the world that it was often difficult
for me to reach”, says Beale. “There is no doubt that my disability meant I was less distracted by sport than many of my contemporaries. I lived more in my mind and imagination.”
The artist’s style has had to change over time to manage the effects of his disability, but Beale refuses to be perturbed. While his dominant hand has been causing him trouble, especially later in his life, the artist has adapted, and his art has reaped the rewards. A devotee to oils and pastels, when applied with his non-dominant hand these mediums achieve a sense of freedom of line and shade, echoing the hazy weather effects he so painstakingly renders. As with Titian, whose late style would not be out of place in an exhibition on the Impressionists despite spending most of his life pursuing exacting realism, this change in approach opens up entirely new avenues of representation that suits a practice focused on the beauty of nature.
/ Each branch, petal and whorl of cloud receives great attention, gradations of light and shade rolling across them like a breeze. /
What is most notable about Beale is the care he takes in his treatment of his works and his artmaking. Each branch, petal and whorl of cloud receives great attention, gradations of light and shade rolling across them like a breeze. The artist regularly works from a bright base of reds and oranges, every layer of his pieces working towards a full effect, animating his palette with vivid undertones. Beale handles his tools with the same consideration, the nightly routine of cleaning his brushes as important to him as putting brush to paper. “I have some sables that are more than 50 years old”, he boasts, “which is just as well because they are bloody expensive”.
Beale is an artist whose life has been enriched and empowered by art in fundamental ways. His practice has developed because of the hardships he has experienced, rather than in spite of them, and his art is all the better for it. What we are presented with is the beauty that Beale sees in the world, his eye trained on the intimate wonders of nature, and these acadian visions are executed by a careful and loving hand – dominant or otherwise.
Above: Artist Roger Beale. PHOTO: ROGER CARTER
