Gualala Arts Promoting public interest and participation in the arts since 1961
Inside of the Outside
A surprising exhibit by the “We Are Animals” artist of
Drew Beam, Susan Routledge, & Dan Beam
This art exhibit is a collection of art that challenges expectations rendered in an array of media—figurative, representational, abstractions, acrylics, digital print, ink, and watercolor. From large canvasses to smaller prints, this exhibit explores our relationship to the outer world of “reality” and universal consciousness to the inner world of individual transformation.
The trio of Drew Beam, Susan Routledge, and Dan Beam are award winning artists whose works reside in art collections, homes, and offices. United by their love of craft and challenging the status quo with the unexpected, this is the second significant showing the three have done together. The first was the successful “We are Animals” show at Gualala Arts Center in 2019. The “Inside of the Outside” exhibit is designed to provoke new insights in how we look at the world with wit, humility, and confronting possibilities. It invites and inspires audience discussions of what art evokes and how might it shape how we look at the future as we peer into the unknown.
If foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds (as Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said), then wise contradiction is the fire breathing dragon of larger thinking. The upcoming Inside of the Outside show at the Gualala Arts Center breathes fire into contradictory perspectives. What appears to be, is not necessarily so. What seems representational is expressive, intuitive, and counter-intuitive all at once. This art unhinges our points of view and shatters our expectations, while it reflects and sometimes makes sense of our time. Like all eras of big transitions, we are having to make meaning in a time of great complexity and expanding chaos. We do this by zooming out to see new patterns, then zoom in to open new possibilities. What we see is—a simultaneous coming and going; big things and little things changing things; unexpected new combinations taking over the harvest of new thinking. In short, we see the Inside of the Outside.
Susan Routledge
Susan was born in Northumberland, England, close to the Scottish Border counties and the Lake District. After studying at Newcastle College of Art Susan worked as a watercolor artist for Halcyon Days of London. Halcyon Days, having a royal appointment to her Majesty the Queen as suppliers of Objets d’Art, offered ample opportunity for Susan to broaden her talent.
In 1981, Susan relocated to California and studied with several prominent artists, such as the late Jade Fon, Tom Nicholas, Gerald Brommer, Betty Lynch, Frank Webb, Irving Shapiro, Leo Smith and Carrie Burns-Brown. Susan’s work is included in many private and corporate collections, including Kaiser Permanence and Genentech.
Affiliates, Art Shows and Organizations associated with Susan’s work:
MASTER ARTIST – Signature member of California Watercolor Association
Signature Member of San Diego Watercolor Society
San Diego Watercolor Society International Exhibition
Springfield Museum of Fine Arts Exhibition in Massachusetts
Nature Company Bay Area Show
Sausalito Art Festival
Numerous private and corporate collections
Dan Beam
Having fallen in love with the Gualala area in the early 80’s, Dan and his wife now live on the Coast just north of Gualala. The awakening sounds of barking sea lions and cawing seagulls on the islands in front of their home become a call to participate in the continuing dance of life in this rare and wonderful world of beauty. It is here that Dan’s art has most come alive.
All art, by necessity, is abstract but its reality and relevance are determined by where and how it ignites the felt imagination.
Dan’s art is about igniting the felt experience of inquiry-to-imagination. Art first enters the body of feeling with a presence that calls for active inquiry, inquiry that often travels to the future and the past with equal alacrity, opening the space for imagination to explore. From this place of imagination, the viewer completes the creation.
It was this inquiry-to-imagination process that attracted many artists, and artists-to-be, in San Francisco and the Gualala area to come to his studios in both places to collaborate. Over the last several years, Dan has co-created art for exhibits that showcased these unique collaborations. Collaboration requires a generosity of spirit that is essential to a life well lived, a central tenet to Dan’s philosophy and way of creating. The final step in the collaboration is with the viewer and collector of the art.
In addition to bringing his art to collectors, Dan teaches the art of collaboration and the power of borderless creativity to many of the most iconic brands and future shaping enterprises and universities in the world. His enterprise transformation consulting company, co-led with his wife Meredith and his son Drew, is dedicated to creating value and enriching life through transformation. To Dan, art, human enterprise and life itself are one borderless realm of creativity.
If at this point you may be thinking— “This sounds all so philosophical” —but please note that Dan is a bit twisted. He is an inveterate inventor of bizarre humor that today plays upon the stage of his social media cartoon series… “Sense and Nonsense” and his two books “My Mind As I Knew It” and “Business As We Knew It”. Life always tastes better with a twist of humor.
Drew Beam
As a child, Drew remembers being humbled and awed by the immense beauty and power of the world around him. Matched by the inner world of his rich imagination, he soon began to draw upon these deep sources of inspiration in creating his art.
Drew channels and expands his revelatory insights and feelings into expressions of inner and outer connection. His artwork becomes interconnected visual stories of the gloriously paradoxical. Light and shadow, love and fear, elegant beauty and the surprisingly unexpected … all dance their complementary circles throughout his many paintings, illustrations, and sculptural creations.
As a self-described “psycho-naut” explorer of the outer reaches of consciousness, Drew continues to apply his expanded understanding of reality through meditation, medicine journeys, and immersive experiences in nature to his multi-varied creations.
“What I create is never meant for others to just understand my vision, to voyeuristically see inside my mind. I intend my work to be a valentine, an open invitation for us all to explore ourselves and each other. In the process we may learn what it means to love the world more deeply”. -Drew Beam
Drew graduated with a BFA in illustration, classical painting, graphic design, glass sculpture, and printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1999. Since graduation, Drew has received multiple awards and recognition including…
- 2nd place in Salon De Refuse Art Competition 2017
Inside-Outside 2 by Drew Beam, Mixed Media, 30″ X 40″ - Best in Show Art in Redwoods Art Competition 2016
- 1st place in Painting Category Art in Redwoods Art Competition 2016
- 1st place in Painting Category Salon De Refuse Art Competition 2016
- New York Times Bestseller Marketing Category : Winning The Story Wars 2011- 2022
- Telly Award: Detox Fashion (Greenpeace) 2013
- Telly Award: Hero’s Journey 2012
- AIGA Cause /Effect Award: Autodesk Sustainability Workshop 2011
- Cannes Lion Design Award: Best Billboard Campaign 2007
In his professional life, Drew has worked as an Art Teacher, Illustrator, Creative Director, Video Producer, Designer, and Musician. Currently, Drew passionately works with BEAM, Inc. developing Brand Strategy / Branding Design, assisting iconic brands, start-up businesses, non-profits, and foundations to co-create transformational, regenerative change serving the greater good for the whole planet.
