“Rick Beerhorst, Internationally acclaimed artist”.

Rick Beerhorst born Richard Hendrick Beerhorst in 1960, Grand Rapids, Michigan^[1], United States, is an internationally renowned artist.^{[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]}

William Deresiewicz Literary Art Critic stated of Beerhorst’s work, “You’re a…multiplatform artist, in the term one sometimes sees…The point is versatility^[15].

Beerhorst’s work has been included in book covers for Walter Wangerin Jr. with ‘Paul A Novel’ in 2001 winning Wangerin a Christian Book Award Gold Medallion.

Stanley Hauerwas with ‘Cross-Shattered Christ- Meditations on the Seven Last Words’^[16][17]; Alec Hershman ‘Permanent and Wonderful Storage’ and a painting commissioned of Paul the Apostle for the front cover of Christianity Today^[18] ‘Rethinking Paul’ (August 2007 edition); Shane Claiborne ‘Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals’.^{[19][20][21][22]}

Beerhorst is also known for his large-scale paintings and civic installations.^{[23][24][25][26][27]}

Beerhorst’s work spans a variety of media including painting, woodblock relief printing and sculpture^[28][29].

‘City as Muse’ a large-scale installation, that won the ArtPrize Competition in 2014 sold for $53,000.

Beerhorst’s work has been shown in 28 exhibitions, 4 Museums and Universities^[30] and 10 private collections that hold more than 20 of his works each^[31] across Northern and Southern Europe through to the United States.^[32]

Style of Art

John Yau Art Critic stated that, “Beerhorst has taken his cues from Byzantine icons, early Renaissance.^[36][37]painters such as Giovanni di Paolo, juxtaposed with the Naïve Art of American Limners”.^[1]

Beerhorst’s rural background views are also a reference to early Renaissance^[38][39]artists such as Andrea del Verocchio, Leonardo da Vinci and Piero della Francesca.

The symbolism that features within Beerhorst’s paintings include the use of animals such as cats, birds such as Rooks, Doves and Hummingbirds and insects such as butterflies and snails, that cover either one or both of the eyes of his muse’s face. Inanimate objects such as books and spools of thread, also feature within this work. “Beerhorst is not just a fan of the iconography of books, but of reading itself”^[28].

Beerhorst’s use of symbolism, reflects the delicate fragility of youth and all that it embodies.

The religious symbols that adorn his paintings are part of a surrealist universe stemming from his subconscious. Beerhorst’s erotic references are a revenge on a puritan adolescence, between Christian taboo and sublimated impulses.

John Yau, Art critic noted Beerhorst’s use of symbolism as, “small, quirky, symbolic abstractions with a spiritual undercurrent”.^[1]

John Yau, went on to say, “It is not even that [Beerhorst] decided to commit [his] life to art. It is that [he] embraced [his] culture, made it [his] subject in a non-didactic and celebratory way…Beerhorst depicts adolescent girls who inhabit a world that has distanced itself from mainstream society, its obsession with mass media and pop culture. [His] work is tough and touching.”.^[1]

John Yau believes that, “In Beerhorst’s paintings, girls and young women are often shown reading, but viewers sometimes cannot see their eyes because he obscures them with the reader’s book or overlays them with a disembodied hand or a fluttering hummingbird. With the aid of a book, the girls have transported themselves somewhere else; they are absorbed interiorized space, a world that is separate from ours, that we are not privy to, as the hovering hummingbird suggests. If we are unable to see the girl’s eyes, we cannot know what any of them are thinking/ seeing. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, then covering them with a flying creature conveys a complexity of feelings. Did the girls close the viewer out? Are they acquiring knowledge about things we don’t want them to know?”.^[1]

John Yau concluded with, “There is something disturbing about Beerhorst’s paintings. And part of it is their refusal to be charming. His subjects strike me as remote, unavoidably so. Whoever we are, we are intruders”.

Born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan^[40]. Beerhorst mentioned that, “The first piece of art I remember making was a drawing of my mother. I remember it creating kind of a stir in our household because I was very young, maybe five?”.^[41]

Beerhorst grew up in an evangelical community in the American Midwest and would use art, nature and pop culture as an escape from reality^[32][42][43]. Beerhorst was quoted saying, “There’s a powerful vibe that comes off of things that are handmade and having those things in your environment where you live”^[44][45]

Beerhorst gained a Batchelor of Fine Arts from Calvin College now Calvin University, Michigan and then a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Illinois, where he studied with and was a close colleague of Christopher Brown^[46], before leaving Grand Rapids in 1983 to go to New York, in order to immerse himself in the 1980’s Art scene, predominated by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Julian Schnable.

Through Michael Love, Beerhorst’s former brother-in-law, and Love’s connection with Jean-Michel Basquiat in the 1980’s, Basquiat recognized the significance of Beerhorst’s work within the contemporary New York art scene.

Yau noted that, “It is not even that [Beerhorst] decided to commit [his] life to art. It is that [he] embraced [his] culture, made it [his] subject in a non-didactic and celebratory way…Beerhorst depicts adolescent girls who inhabit a world that has distanced itself from mainstream society, its obsession with mass media and pop culture. [His] work is tough and touching.”.^[1]

Beerhorst’s preparatory sketches were commented as being “artworks in their own right”. “When I am working up an idea for a new painting, I am in a very vulnerable place. I don’t like it there, but if I don’t go there, there are simply no new paintings”. Beerhorst mentions divine appointments, those things [He] makes plans for even as something else shows up that is infinitely more interesting”^[47].^[48]

As a painter ranked in ArtFacts^[49], Beerhorst’s work has been represented in 28 exhibitions to date^[32], gaining awards and grants including the ArtPrize Urban Space category award with ‘Plan B’^[50] and his work stands in museums, libraries and collections internationally.

Beerhorst has stated that “I am an artist because I have a deep inner compulsion to make things that are beautiful and kind of enchanting. You know that feeling you have when you see …a young (or older) man or woman pass by that are just really beautiful and you feel that bit of a swoon? I want to create that fleeting experience for people but I also want to surprise them and maybe even tug the viewer into a place of confusion where they will be forced to reconsider what they have known before and have new thoughts and new ideas”.^[41]

Beerhorst’s work has been in the Primary Art Market for the past 40 years and is now in the Secondary Artprice Art Market phase^[51][52]

(This list is not exhaustive)

^[1]