Kelly Beeman: Window Shopping

Exotic gardens, cool swimming pools, country-house picnics and cocktail parties form the backdrop for Brooklyln-based fashion illustrator/artist Kelly Beeman's (b. 1983) long-limbed, elegantly dressed Modigliani-like women. They are the protagonists of Beeman's profuse fantasy world brimming with childhood memories of Oklahoma and subtle nods and tributes to interior design, architecture, music and literature. For Beeman's first publication, both survey and artist's book, she gathers over 50 color illustrations whose sources of inspiration include lookbooks and catwalk shots. An autodidact, Beeman studied sociology at Hunter College in New York, then worked for several years in Bolivia and Argentina. Her background in sociology informs how she thinks about her artwork: it's about the relationship between culture and fashion, a fundamental aspect of every society. "Dressing" her subjects is a way for Beeman to create characters, stories and cultural context and explore their significance in a world of self-display. Her inspirations, she says, are the New Objectivity, especially Christian Schad and Otto Dix, graphic works of the Vienna Secession as well as Classic and Byzantine art. Beemans illustrations have been widely published internationally in Vogue China and Vogue Korea, InStyle, Marie Claire Italia and Numero Tokyo for fashion labels such as Dior, Tory Burch and many others.