John Beerman is a renowned painter, North Carolina native, and current Hillsborough resident whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. John received his degree from Rhode Island School of Design and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

His 35-year career has garnered recognition at the highest levels of fine art. He has received several awards and fellowships, including the Pollack-Krasner Foundation Award and the Yaddo Artist Colony Fellowship. His work is in the collection of numerous museums across the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.

Among other public collections, his work is at the Duke University Cancer Center, the Duke Endowment, and the North Carolina Governor’s mansion. He also has completed several public commissioned works, including an 85-foot mural for the Milstein Family Heart Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City and a painting for the UNC-Rex Hospital in Raleigh.

John lives with his partner, poet and clinical psychologist Tori Reynolds. His children are both Brooklyn-based artists: Check out Hannah’s paintings and Joseph’s music.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I believe artists are, in their own way, working to heal a broken world. My work is an effort to imagine and translate the transcendental – to search for the heart of the matter, something beneath the surface, where truth resides.

In my recent paintings, l've begun to allow more of the unknown to guide me, deliberately cultivating an expansive inner world. It feels like putting on headphones and entering a psychic space that is by turns surprising, playful, difficult, and deeply rewarding. I am singing my song – translating it into color and form. The song reshapes itself again and again until it reveals an expression I could not have anticipated. I go where there is no roadmap, opening pathways to new possibilities.

Each painting begins with color, laid down freely, almost as a first breath. From there, a dialogue emerges – hard against soft, cool against warm, opaque against translucent-an attempt to unify opposites. The process is guided by intuition, unfolding slowly, until an image takes form. If the work succeeds, it resonates with a mystery that feels both discovered and inevitable.