Joy Beardmore has been a professional artist and exhibitor for over forty years. Her life is painting and drawing, beginning with a five year painting diploma course at the National Art School East Sydney Technical College from the age of fifteen.
Working either on paper or canvas with spontaneity and confidence painting the essence and character of the surrounding landscape, sitter or subject matter is always an exciting challenge for Joy.
With her latest portrait, completed in early February 2006, Beardmore has managed to successfully capture the subject with a spectacular landscape as a backdrop, so marrying two great loves. Her Neo- Impressionistic style of painting reflects the light, colour, and grandeur as well as the essence and depth of the sitter in his domain. Living in the NSW Dungog Shire for over seven years has added a new dimension to her work. Prior to this change of venue, the South Coast of NSW was home for twenty years. Then for sixteen years Beardmore and her late husband, artist Ross Davis, lived an alternative lifestyle of six months each year in a small village in Mallorca, Spain, working and conducting ‘Paint in Spain’ workshops. This unique lifestyle allowed opportunities for exhibiting in Australia, Paris, Sweden and Spain, experiencing the differences between the European colour and light to that of Australia.
Commissions for portraits have resulted in Beardmore being represented in Stockholm, Spain, San Francisco, England and Australia. In October 2005, Beardmore and Davis paintings were shown in a combined exhibition at the Forest Gallery on the south coast. The exhibition was opened by Margaret Woodward and was a great success. Joy’s determination and ability has resulted in her being selected as a finalist in the 2004 Country Energy Landscape Prize, eight times in the Portia Geach Portrait Prize and once in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. Beardmore was also one of thirty portrait artists selected by Portrait Artists Australia to represent Australian Portraiture in May 2005. The portrait of Margaret Fink was exhibited in Washington DC. Ruth Cracknell, Hayes Gordon, and Denise Roberts are some of the more well known subjects for other portraits.