A local Battle Ground senior citizen is making award winning paintings of Clark County scenery at the age of 92.
“Why did I get into painting? Because I love the trees, mountain; God made those for us,” Beamon said.
For her entire life, Beamon has been noticing and trying to capture the beauty of the things she sees.
“My art is the very center of my universe because it gives me something to keep me busy,” Beamon said.
Her apartment decorations consist of photographs of her family and the works of art she has done over the years.
The first painting she made when she moved into this space, around 26 years ago, was a painting of the old Cedar Creek Grist Mill.
For a long time she said she wanted a kitchen window, so when a nearby house was being torn down, she asked for a window frame and put it up in her kitchen.
Behind the window she stuck a painting she made of Mount St. Helens.
“Mountains are very spatial,” Beamon said. “Colorado has got some beautiful mountain scenery and here we have Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens.”
Where Beamon gets inspiration from varies, sometimes it’s the nature around her, other times it may be her own imagination but sometimes it comes from what other people have captured.
“I painted the deer that was in the paper,” Beamon said. “I liked the picture and said ‘whoa, I’m gonna paint that.’”
Beamon has entered her paintings into contests and won awards as well as sold her paintings to people who enjoy them.
One piece of work she did was a painting of a mountain, but she didn’t know what to put into the foreground until a friend of hers mentioned she owned a cabin.
That cabin suggestion is what Beamon added to complete the painting she was working on.
With her success and skill in painting, she has been offered several opportunities to join local art communities, but she’s chosen to decline.
“I want to create my own, and enjoy the sceneries and the people, the birds especially and the squirrels,” Beamon said.
One thing she wants to leave behind is a legacy for her children and grandchildren.
Beamon was born in Franklin, Nebraska, and moved to Colorado at age 12. After spending five years in a hospital because of an illness, she moved to California.
It was there that she met her husband Bob, and then in the year 1962, she and Bob moved up to Amboy, Washington.
Together they helped to start the Territorial Days and invested their lives in their community.
Her work allows her to capture what she says is God’s handiwork in creation.
One of the more recent works she has been working on is paintings to give to her grandchildren individually.
“I am making one picture for each grandchild specifically,” Beamon said. “ Some of them, I can see them in it.”
Her art and inspiration is always to capture the beauty she sees in the world around her, whether in the animals or the nature of the area.
“I love the afterglow of it, what you can create,” Beamon said.
