Alex Beard
Manhattan native Alex Beard is a painter, writer, and traveler and has emerged as one of his generation's most creative and successful artists. Alex's work has been shown in one-man exhibitions in New Orleans, Los Angeles, New York, Hong Kong, and many places in between. His drawings and paintings are scattered in private collections from Japan to the West Indies and are in museum permanent collections and on public and private walls around the world.
Born in 1970, artist Alex Beard was influenced to think creatively from a young age by his uncle, noted photographer Peter Beard, and his mother Patricia Beard, an author and former editor for Town & Country, Elle, and Mirabella magazines.
Alex grew up among some of the world's most interesting and influential people. Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, and their Pop World cohorts were familiar faces in the Beard household. In his early teens, Alex became a full-time doodler and filled books with sketches using a quill pen and ink. "My hands, and even feet, were always smudged and stained. I made a mess, had fun and somewhere in there learned to draw."
In 1984 at the age of 14, Alex kicked off his unorthodox travels which included shark fishing in Panama, bush driving in Africa, diving in Australia, bone fishing in Belize, hiking the Great Wall of China through the Yan Mountains, spying humpback whales in Alaska, stalking tigers in India, hobnobbing at Basil's Bar in Mustique, and diving the cenotes in Tulum.
In 1995, he began a ten-year stint as a New Orleans artist where he studied at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Art, married and became a father. In 2006, Alex went home to his roots in Manhattan and opened the Alex Beard Studio in SoHo. Recently, Alex returned to the New Orleans arts arena and opened the Alex Beard Studio on Royal St. in the French Quarter.
Starting in September of 2009, Alex Beard will be on tour to promote his new book, The Jungle Grapevine. Look for the book in major booksellers nationwide, and check to see when Alex will be in your home town.