We are honored to display Nathan Beard’s recent Pond’s Edge Series in our Pinellas office on the local art wall. Each quarter we feature a local artist in the space.
Pond’s Edge began on the shores of Crescent Lake when Beard was in transition to fatherhood. Drawn to the visual, ecological and political labyrinth of the Floridian waterscape, Beard’s inspiration for his Pond’s Edge paintings and drawings comes from both unspoiled wilderness and from brief moments of beauty in urban retention ponds and modified natural spaces like Sawgrass Lake Park. As its name suggests, Pond’s Edge is a quiet search for a more passive balance with natural forces and formally focused upon the interaction of surface and depth, plant-life and cast shadows, color and light. He references photos taken on walks with his family and the series helps to hone the drawing and observational skills he needs for his entire body of work.
Beard creates in St. Petersburg, FL and serves as both Assistant Curator and Faculty at Dunedin Fine Art Center. He earned A BFA from Colorado State University in 2001, and has exhibited extensively since 2013, including Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, Tampa Museum of Art, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan), Museum of Coastal Carolina, Highlands Museum of the Arts, Gallery 221, Olivet Nazarene University, Morean Arts Center, Dunedin City Hall Gallery, JADA Art Fair (Miami), and Brooker Creek Preserve. Beard’s work is in a number of private and corporate collections, including Parkview Medical Center, Great Bay Distributors, B2 Communications, MHK, Penny Hoarder, Osprey Properties, Sabal Trust and Tampa Bay Title. In January 2020, several of Beard’s large paintings were selected to serve in the Arts in Embassies program at the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador.
