BEANLAND, Frank

1936 - 2019

Francis Charles Beanland was born at 2 Gilbert Street, Bridlington, Yorkshire on 15 April 1936, son of Ernest Beanland (18 August 1904-3 April 1978), an engineer, and his wife Kathleen Elizabeth née Green (2 May 1906-1994), who married at Bridlington in 1933 and in 1939 they were still at Bridlington. Frank, as he was known, was educated at Bridlington School, and studied at Hull School of Art 1952-1957 and, after two years of National Service, at the Slade School of Fine Art, London 1959-1961 under Claude Rogers (1907-1970), and a Boise Travelling Scholarship took him to Stockholm, before returning to live in Cornwall. Frank began exhibiting at Young Contemporaries in 1960 and in 1962, a fellow Slade student invited Beanland to join several other artists in Porthleven and paint by the harbour, exhibiting under the banner of the 'Porthleven Group'. During this formative period in Porthleven, Beanland became an abstract painter and achieved his first solo show in 1963 at the Drian Gallery, London this was followed by a second in 1965. In 1964 he took a teaching post at Swansea College of Art; it was at this time he changed his palette knife for a brush and his 'spot paintings' began to emerge. The building up of surface now consisted of putting a spot at the centre of another spot to give it greater intensity, when these paintings were first shown at the Grabowski Gallery in 1967, Beanland's spot paintings proved popular. Frank moved to Suffolk in 1966 from where he developed a good working relationship with Peter Cochrane of Arthur Tooth Gallery where he had three one-man shows between 1969 and 1974 also exhibiting at Lowestoft College of Art and the University of East Anglia in 1970. Also showing with the London Group of Artists and at Gimpel Fils and had a solo exhibition at 'Smiths Gallery One' in 1999. He married at Cirencester, Gloucestershire in 1980, artist Emily Gwynne-Jones and they lived at Poplar Hall, Frostenden near Wangford before moving to Fressingfield, Eye, both in Suffolk. Francis Charles Beanland died in 2019.

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Works by This Artist