Artist Beth McLean combines an impressionist palette with a loose realist approach to create her light filled oil renditions of low country scenery and people. Her long time mentor, noted local artist and art instructor Martin Ahrens has said that Beth’s talent for composition and her luminous representation of the beauty of the lowcountry are two of her many innate strengths.
Whether working en plein aire or from her personal photographs in her light filled studio on Sullivan’s Island, Ms. McLean has the ability to visualize and render on canvas the particular beauty of the low country landscape. Her pieces trigger a common memory for those that have experienced the glowing light in the landscape and in the faces of the people indigenous to the south. Ms. McLean’s work exemplifies the quotation by Paul Klee, “Art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible.”
Ms. McLean uses an intense color palette leaning heavy on the use of ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow, but her skill in the application of these colors to the canvas results in a soft warm glow in the finished pieces rather than the shocking effect that these pigments might yield if used right out of the tube. Among her favorite painters are Sorolla, Cassatt and Sargent; these masters of fine art continue to inspire her to paint soulful renditions of ordinary people in an extraordinary light and help drive home her desire to capture the emotion of the moment. Her optimism and love of life are evident in her moving, inviting, warm and distinctly classic paintings that capture the way of life on our sea islands and surrounding low country areas. Beth graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and the Art Institute in Ft. Lauderdale. She is a member of Oil Painters of America as well as the Charleston Artist Guild.
