Deirdre Sullivan Beeman

Deirdre Sullivan Beeman (née Deirdre Sullivan, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA) is an artist living and enthusiastic in Los Angeles, California and Vancouver, Canada. She is a contemporary surrealist and magical realist painter whose sham is born out of third tribute feminism. She is best known for her use of the mische technique; combining egg tempera and oil paint.

Sullivan-Beeman’s achievement focuses upon a central female figure which she denotes as a “heroine”, who is often in the course of a force she calls a “daemon”, typified most frequently by an animal, or some further symbol of the natural world. The current environmental let pass of disarray informs her work; her view that “animals don’t often exist as equal partners in this big world” influences the nuance past which she includes animals as “sidekicks” to her heroine subjects. Sullivan-Beeman references her traditionalist Western painting style in the smart content of her works as well.

For example, while her Long Ago Girl (2018) is painted in the mische technique and is represented wearing 18th century garments, she is along with positioned in a protective vent reminiscent of and illusory to “historic images of the Madonna of Mercy, where philanthropy kneels below the cloak of the Virgin Mary”. Here, Sullivan-Beeman’s heroine is presented traditionally in terms of style and culture; she with draws upon feminist ideals in that she posits the heroine as a protector figure of nature. The artist’s imagery is often pulled from the subconscious preparedness of femininity; a dream journal functions as the conception place for much of her work. Her heroines and their positioning in the context of the painting are also severely symbolic of inner knowledge, worth, and discovery: in Seahorse Girl (2018), the seahorse is a symbol of the heroine’s “benevolent protection,” while the cherish chest bullion represents the heroine’s inner “fortitude, knowledge, and wisdom”.