Celebrate the life of an artist with a beautiful book of their life’s work. This privately published book honours the life of artist Richard Beer who died in 2017 without family, but awash with friends who curated and edited this lovely limited edition book.
Richard (DIck) was a talented artist and printmaker, teacher and great traveller, but more than all this, he was an old and dear family friend. He was born in 1928 and died in 2017 and his many friends decided to publish this book both to commemorate his life and his talent, but also to bring Dick’s work to everyone who hadn’t had the pleasure of knowing him so that they too could be swept along in his own inimitable joie de vivre.
When Dick died, his house was stuffed to the gunnels with his own work and work he’d collected throughout his life and travels. He had diaries and notebooks, sketches, paintings and photographs. However, by the time the idea had been hatched to create the book, the house had been cleared and the work sent as a lot to an auctioneer and there wasn’t much by way of photography ready and available for our use. Nevertheless, we were able to contact the auctioneers and, using the low resolution images from the catalogues ( with some Hurtwood magic applied), we began to tell the story.
Jennifer Opie, the editor, became a regular visitor to Hurtwood and she, Roger and Paul spent hours refining and increasing the quality of the digital images supplied. We also had Dick’s notebooks and diaries which we scanned for use as illustrations. These were a particular challenge as very often Dick would write a particularly salacious detail about a companion or acquaintance which, whilst fascinating and very possibly even true, could not be published!
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