Exit Music #66 (Bloom Kintsugi)

15" x 23" original acrylic on board by Florida based artist Nathan Beard.

Nathan Beard's paintings are an abstract representation of the fleeting moments of everyday life. Conceptually, he is drawn to interweaving layers and their metaphorical application to memory recall, and moments in time. Each painting is based upon a recollection of the sensations, colors and spaces perceived by the artist.

This piece in particular follows family lines and lineage. 

See more from Nathan Beard here.

More from the Artist:

The Kintsugi series continues to evolve with Life Lines, a project that re-envisions the family tree as a vine, representing individuals as lines moving through Space-Time rather than as points arranged generationally and connected by branches. Leveraging the collective power of his extended family’s memory of itself, Beard has mapped 6 generations of his maternal, paternal, step and married families. Each individual’s line is depicted with guidance from data – year of birth, departure from home, marriage, and death – and is placed within the composition according to birth year and maternal family group. All living persons are white lines in a blue field in reference to architectural blueprints and the activity of constructing the present and future. All deceased persons are gold in reference to kintsugi, the ancient Japanese tradition of fixing broken ceramics with gold-dusted lacquer.

Central to Life Lines is the metaphor that the kintsugi tradition presents – the broken vessel that was once flawless, now imperfect, and somehow more beautiful. Not just for its golden seams, but also for the type of dedicated love summoned to repair the vessel rather than to make or acquire another. It is a profound love that honors not only the thing, but all past effort to create the thing and all future effort to nurture its transformation into something new and as equally meaningful.

Watch the creation of Life Lines here: The Creation of Life Lines - YouTube

Contact us to talk about commissioning a Life Line painting of your family genealogy. We will work with you to collect and organize the data needed to create a rich and meaningful narrative abstract painting, at any size, for your home.