Gillian Beckles is immediately recognisable, not only by a very personal style and distinctive palette, but because her appealing painting belongs to an enchanted world of her own.
Bika Reed
Gillian has exhibited with the gallery since 2003 and shared a joint exhibition with Matthew Batt in 2004 and Oliver Contemporary held her retrospective in September 2019.
She was born in 1918 and sadly died in 2016. She studied at Heatherley School of Fine Art in the 1940’s and since then exhibited regularly at the Women’s International Art Club between 1948-65 and extensively around the world, winning the Prix Suisse de Peinture Naive, Morges in 1980 & 81. Her work is in numerous private and public collections in the U.K. & Europe.
Bibliography :
Anatole Jakovsky Peintres Naifs, Basillus Presse, 1976, p. 95
Sheldon Williams / Eric Lister 20th Century British Naive and Primitive Artists, 1977, p 20
Oto Bihalji-Merin / Nebojsa-Bato Tomasevic World Encyclopedia of Naive Art, Frederick Muller, 1984, p 124 & 163
David Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945, 1998 & 2006, Vol 1, p. 111.