Beka Smith: Looks Under The Skin
Green PebbleOctober/November 2009 issue

Meet Beka Smith. ‘I’m known for being quite extrovert,’ says the portrait artist as she greets the morning wearing a stripy dress in shades of cyan, green and pink, and a pair of ‘retro’ boots with flowers on. Beka is clearly not shy and neither, it seems, are the people who posed for her latest portraits. Donning colourful and theatrical costumes – which included clown suits, cat suits and Red Indian headdresses – these subjects happily posed for a series of cheeky, spirited acrylic paintings which will be on exhibition at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam College in October.

Appearances can be deceptive, as Beka hopes to demonstrate with her theme ‘Ego Alter Ego’. Few, if any, of the people in these portraits are as extraverted in their everyday lives as they appear on canvas.

‘The outfits they are wearing have been carefully thought out and co-ordinated to reflect the wearer’s personality and how they want to present themselves,’ Beka explains. By inviting them to step into their costumes, she watched a transformation begin to take place as they adopted the persona of their emerging ‘alter ego’.

‘As they dressed up in costume, they became the characters of their imagination, and inevitably they lost their inhibitions. Usually, when I undertake a portrait, people are uncomfortable to begin with, but I haven’t had that problem with these subjects because they went straight into character. Having costumes on was really liberating. We had a lot of fun with it, and that was the crux of it, the portraits were supposed to be fun. I think there are a lot of people who are down at the moment because of the credit crunch, and I wanted to show a lighter side; a happier side; a bright and colorful side.’ ...

Beka Smith can be contacted via her website.

This is only a small part of Green Pebble's feature article. Subscribe and get all the latest articles about East Anglia's artists delivered to your door.

Back to directory of articles

Beka Smith: Looks Under The Skin Green PebbleOctober/November 2009 issue

Beka Smith: Looks Under The Skin
Green PebbleOctober/November 2009 issue