Robert Beck b. 1950 -
Robert Beck grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and left a career in the business world at the age of 40 to pursue painting. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Robert currently maintains studios in New Hope, PA and New York City.
Robert Beck’s paintings have been the subject of four in-depth museum exhibitions: the James A. Michener Art Museum (1999), the City of Trenton Museum at Ellarslie (2007) and the Maine Maritime Museum (2016). A major solo retrospective of his work was presented by the James A. Michener Art Museum in 2021. Robert Beck’s work has been exhibited in 32 solo gallery exhibitions, including at the National Arts Club (New York), the Rosenfeld Gallery (Philadelphia), the Morpeth Gallery (Pennington and Hopewell, New Jersey), New Hope Arts Center, and the Gallery of Robert Beck (Lambertville, NJ). His paintings have been accepted to more than 70 juried exhibitions. He is currently represented by Morpeth Contemporary in Hopewell, NJ.
Beck has received 29 significant painting awards, was a finalist for the Pew Fellowship in 2000, and in 2014 was awarded the Philadelphia Sketch Club Medal for Excellence and Contribution to the Arts by the oldest artists’ club in America. He was the Honored Artist at the 2017 Phillips Mill Exhibition and the New Hope Arts Center Legacy Artist in 2018. In 2020 he was elected a Signature Member of the American Society of Marine Artists.
Robert Beck is a teacher, a curator, a lecturer and a writer, and he has hosted a radio interview program. His column on his art-related experiences, entitled “A Thousand Words”, has appeared monthly in ICON Magazine since 2005. His essays and images are regularly published in the West Side Rag.
Robert Beck is known for painting “visual essays,” in which he addresses a subject through multiple images, including work created live while traveling the Mississippi River on a towboat pushing barges, amidst a symphony orchestra during its performances, with a racing team in Europe, and traveling with doctors in Senegal. His paintings depicting life in the Maine Maritime community are his largest body of work with a single focus.
His subjects vary, but the common thread in all of his images is viewpoint: the depiction of his encounter. Through Beck’s deft observation and description, the viewer discovers what it is like to be there. Concentrating on occupations and environments, Robert Beck’s paintings are an important chronicle of our time. He is presently engaged in an examination of the special places that comprise the Upper West Side community in New York City. Those paintings and essays are published weekly in the West Side Rag.
Robert Beck is a member of the Salmagundi Club, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, and is a Signature Member of the American Society of Marine Artists. He lives with his wife, Doreen, in New Hope and New York.