Ricky "Bear" Beene |
But in artistic terms, the town is prospering. Even though he had no formal training in painting, he just decided to start doing it, using computer-altered photos as his bases, and "has painted more than 300 portraits: mothers and daughters, great grandfathers and their grandsons," the writers report. "He’s painted the same person multiple times over several years, each portrait portraying the man’s descent into drug addiction. He’s been asked to photograph a man on his death bed, and plans to create a painting from those photographs."
Beene told the Yonder, “When I'm painting, I may be looking and thinking a whole lot about color, but I'm also thinking about other things as well – the tragedies of the people's lives I'm working on or their victories, or a combination of the two, and how sometimes one is hard to be delineated from the other.” Each time he has a show, Beene says, the people of Petros try their best to see it. "They feel a sense of pride that someone in their community paints – and wants to represent them." (Read more) (Video from Center for Rural Strategies)
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