“I definitely use art as a way to process ideas and things that I think about the world.

I like to paint large. Small paintings make me feel kind of claustrophobic, so my paintings tend to be bigger. And I also like things to be on a human scale. When confronted with a painting that is your size, you relate to it differently than something that is smaller and intimate.

I am mostly interested in the human story. Well, that’s all I’m interested in really. However, something that can relate to a human story is what I’m interested in. I’ve done a lot of portraits. People ask me, ‘Well, who would be someone you’d want to paint?’ I’m like, ‘Anybody.’ I find everybody interesting. And so, really nobody is off limits in terms of who I would be interested in. I am so interested in what makes someone them. The twists and turns of how they got to where they are, what they care about, what they hate and whatever that is.

A facet of that interest is children. I’m a mom with six kids, so I have had tons of observation time with my children and their friends. My world has involved hundreds of children over the years, from volunteering to my kids’ friends to whatever. I’m particularly interested in younger kids’ freedom and their ties to the creative world that they live in which is almost more interesting to them than the physical world at times; and how much of that gets lost in adulthood and maybe even in the teen years. I’ve just become more and more alarmed at how rapidly that’s vanishing and how we’re not protecting their creative spaces anymore.

So, a lot of my work right now is about children, with an intense look at their creative worlds, to try to remind us of what we’re giving up and what we’re not really bothering to protect.

My piece called ‘The Youngest’ is a painting of my son with my youngest child. The piece is about transitions. Transitions for all of us. Not only the transitions kids go through, but that we as adults just usually don’t even notice. The really important ones. And they’re fleeting.

‘The Youngest’ continues back on itself to the other side, indicating the transitory nature of these moments.”

—Pam Beach, MFA painting student