Hebden Beck (4) Painting

I was born and brought up in London UK. As a child I was always painting and drawing, making things and also performing. When I was seven years old I was a runner up in a big national children's painting competition and also won a Blue Peter badge for a painting. I moved from the city to West Yorkshire when I was ten years old with my family. I went to High School in Otley where I didn't get on with my art teacher who told Although my first love was always art I ended up going to Drama School in Manchester where I lived for forty years. In between acting jobs I painted and drew and then in my late twenties enrolled in a foundation art and design course. Two children later I was accepted on the Fine Art:painting degree at Manchester Metropolitan University and lived my dream: three years painting and obtained a 2:1 (not bad as I was a single parent at the time bringing up two boys). After three years painting in a studio and some exhibitions I was accepted on the MA in Fine Art at MMU where my work became performance-based (video and photography) and afterwards I became quite successful and was one of the leading figures in the Manchester art scene for some time. Three years ago I felt a great desire to paint again and 'get my hands mucky' and so I moved back to 'God's own country' (West Yorkshire) where my work here has been a response to the landscape and underlying issues around me. I have had the freedom to play, experiment and push my own personal boundaries here and the work I have produced is freer than any art I have made before. Some of the work I have created has had an underlying issue; my town was flooded very badly two Winters ago and my practice explored water and the force of nature in the form of waterfalls and landscape paintings and also by incorporating figures either swimming or flying over and in water. I collect inspiration for these works by walking in the local landscape and sometimes use my phone or ipad to take pictures to work from, whilst at other times I paint straight from my head, working intuitively in both cases. I like to experiment with painting on to different materials: glass/perspex/wood/slate/marble creating small A3 works and then hand-printing on to paper. I work with intense expressive colour and marks. This creates a series which I can alter with each pressing. I have exhibited widely both in the UK, Europe and the USA.