“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs”

William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, 1597.

 

Offshoot Arts are delighted to present a new series of paintings by rising talent Amy Beager.  Amy’s painterly language has re-imagined figurative painting with her bold colour juxtapositions; figures rendered in a simultaneously classical yet modern style; and compositions which are exquisitely romantic and poetic.  Several paintings in this collection are inspired by Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy of star-crossed lovers ‘Romeo and Juliet’.  Parallel to the joyous vivid colour palette and swathes of rich paint and brushwork, the figures appear restless, fervent, and in a compelling tension of ecstasy and anguish.  Reminiscent of the dramatic poses of the divine saints from the Renaissance period, these figures hover between the classical and the contemporary.  This collection of paintings both celebrate and explore the emotional intensity and intimacy of love.  Predominantly featuring the female figure, Beager casts these female protagonists as modern-day deities, transcending their stature and presence; suspended, dream-like, between the imagined and reality.  Where Shakespeare’s text explores the notion and ultimate tragedy of forbidden love, it is this tension and drama that is so emotively captured in the artist’s paintings. 

 

Amy Beager is based in Chelmsford in the UK.  In 2007 she obtained a National Diploma in Art & Design and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Nottingham Trent University in 2010.  Beager was selected as a winner of the Delphian Gallery Open Call and exhibited as part of the group exhibition ‘Antisocial Isolation’ at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2020.  Beager’s work has been acquired by the Soho House Group and placed in multiple private collections throughout the UK, Europe, USA, Taiwan and Canada.