Pflazgrafenstein Island on the Rhine Drawing

EPOH BEECH studied as a fine artist in Florence, at Cheltenham Art School and Chelsea School of Art.She has an MA in Art Therapy (Hatfield) and runs art workshops in London.Her studio is at ACAVA in West London.Beech has completed five major series of paintings, each follow a journey, tell a story or illustrate a particular poem. Each has been exhibited in either London and Oxford.The work is strongly influenced by the narrative force and the quest for the sublime through the balance of colour and light most evident in 15th Italian Renaissance Painters.With the great debts to the writings of Marsilio Ficino, J.W. Goethe, Carl Jung and Peter Dawkins, the series explores the use of symbolic narrative and colour. Each painting in these series examines the internal world and the transformative journey of the unconscious. RECENT EXHIBITION'The Marriage of the Thames and the Rhine' THE GALLERY IN REDCHURCH STREET2-7 March, 2010 For Epoh Beechs most recent solo exhibition in London, the accomplished fine artist created 45 ethereal charcoal drawings, and a hand drawn animation, inspired by Wagners The Ring, and Francis Beaumonts 17th Century tome The Masque of the Inner Temple and Grays Inn, Grays Inn and The Inner Temple: This Jacobean masque was performed at Whitehall Palace in 1613, forming an integral part of the nuptials of the daughter of King James I to Frederick V. The pairing was a metaphorical marriage of Germany with England, and a symbolic union of the Thames and the Rhine. Beechs drawings are an investigation into the historic relationship between the Rhine and the Thames. Central characters in Beechs narrative are Hermes, in the form of a seal, and Pegasus the mythological horse, both bearing witness to the voyage of the imagination, unhindered by the straightjacket of history and time. An expert draughtsman who trained as a fine artist at Studio Simi in Florence, Beechs drawings posses an innate romanticism which betrays literary influences such as Goethe, and a passion for music which has encompassed 9 years of violin practice and a passion for Wagnerian compositions. William Kentridge, Anselm Keifer and Samuel Palmer have also been powerful influences on Beechs practice. The use of charcoal to create such heady imagery is symbolic, and highlights the transformation of dark matter into the light, with a debt to the 15th artists of the Italian renaissance that Beech came across during her studies in Florence.