Newest 'in' artist is tops in two fields; Phoebe Beasley commands top prices and support of celebrities

Ebony, Oct, 1989 by Herbert Nipson

NEWEST 'IN' ARTIST IS TOPS IN TWO FIELDS

PHOEBE BEASLEY'S day usually begins around 6 a.m. when she is awakened in her Woodland Hills home by calls from East Coast friends who often forget that there is a three-hour time difference between Los Angeles and New York.

Before 8, she is in what might be called her second home, a Mercedes 420 SEL, headed for her office at a Los Angeles radio station where she works as a very successful advertising account executive.

Back home around 7 p.m., she frequently takes a quick nap and then works for four or five hours, painting in her studio.

For 19 years, Ms. Beasley has maintained this hectic pace. In the process, she has risen to the top in two widely separated fields--one as an advertising executive and the second as a talented "in" artist whose works are in the collections of such discerning celebrities as writer Maya Angelou, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, photographerwriter Gordon Parks, basketball great Bill Russell, actress Marla Gibbs and magazine executives Eunice W. Johnson and Linda Johnson Rice.

Beasley doesn't think of herself as a businesswoman who paints or as an artist who works in business. She loves both careers and has no intention of abandoning one for the other.

Tall, slender and strikingly, attractive, she never tires of meeting the hundreds of people who attend her exhibitions. Frequently she is joined by two or more of her closest friends and dedicated boosters, people like Maya Angelou, Gordon Parks or Bill Russell. Russell, who says Ms. Beasley is "one of the most important artists I have ever met," sponsored her first one-woman show in Seattle in 1976. Since that first one-woman show, she has been featured in more than a dozen major exhibitions in Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, Savannah, Winston-Salem, Los Angeles and other cities.

The businesswoman-artist says she can't remember a time when she didn't want to be an artist. A native of Cleveland, she excelled in art classes in the public schools of that city and received the support and encouragement of relatives and teachers. Her mother died when she was only seven, and her father later married Mildred Gaines, an artist who encouraged her and took her to the Cleveland Art Institute and other cultural institutions. After graduating from Ohio University, the young artist taught art for four years, then moved to Los Angeles where she got a job selling time on KFI/KOST. She is now a senior account executive at the station and handles large volumes of business with auto dealers and fast-food chains. She is also involved with tie-in radio shows with the Los Angeles Raiders.

Despite the rapid rise in her business career, Ms. Beasley neglected her art career. She had developed a personal style of painting, primarily mixed media collages influenced by the work of her idoal, the late Romare Bearden, but with a figurative openness that is her personal signature. She made the rounds of galleries, entered shows and continued to take courses at the Otis/Parson Art Institute in Los Angeles.

She learned early that the established general galleries would not show works by Black artists. More than once she was told by White gallery owners, "I don't carry Black art." She was even more surprised by the comments of some White artists, who asked, "Why do you always paint Black subjects."

"It was strange," she recalls, "especially since they were painting nothing but White subjects.... But most of my themes are what I know, based on my point of reference, just like any other artist." She says she wants her art to say something about the history of her people, especially the Black family.

Solidly established as an advertising executive, Phoebe Beasley is definitely on the rise as a leading Black artist. One indication is the price of her works. "Ten years ago," she says, "I was averaging around $800 or $900 for a painting. Last year the galleries were getting ten times that. This year they tell me that I should be looking at $20,000 a painting."

Businesswoman Phoebe Beasley is definitely pleased by the progress of artist Phoebe Beasley.