2014
Contemporary New York City-based artist Mark Beard has long demonstrated command in a variety of mediums — he works in oil paint, bronze, ceramics and more. Beard is known mainly for his portraits and figurative paintings, but he is prolific in figurative drawing and nude photography as well.
Beard was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1986, he began working as a set designer, and for the next decade, he created more than 20 sets in New York City, London, Frankfurt, Vienna and Cologne. As a painter and printmaker, Beard didn’t wish to confine himself to a rigid style and instead sought to explore Impressionism, Art Nouveau and other movements in a range of mediums. In order to freely move from one style to the next, Beard created several different personas, assigning a specific biography to each one.
Beard's most prominent artistic alter ego is Bruce Sargeant, whom the artist has positioned in exhibitions as an early 20th-century painter. Beard's work as Sargeant is a detailed study of the male physique. The paintings often feature sculpted athletic men engaged in physical activities like wrestling and rowing. The work is steeped in homoeroticism, and the artist’s name itself is a reference to painter John Singer Sargent — while he’s best known for his Edwardian-era portraits, John Singer Sargent also created murals and drawings of male nudes that were similarly reflective of a homoerotic sensibility.
Beard is also an accomplished landscape painter. His great-grandfather, George Beard, was a regional painter and photographer of the Rocky Mountains. Mark spent summers at his grandfather's 19th-century log cabin retreat as a child. These formative experiences are reflected in his own stunning landscape paintings.
Beard's artwork is held in many high-profile museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Today, Beard resides in the Manhattan loft that he purchased in 1994 with his partner, James Manfred. It serves as both his home and his studio. The space is filled with his oil paintings, drawings and sculptures.
On 1stDibs, find Mark Beard paintings, drawings, photography and more.
Favorite Day (Abstracted Moody Landscape in Earth tones)
By David Konigsberg
Located in Hudson, NY
Favorite Day (Abstracted Moody Landscape in Earth tones) by David Konigsberg 2025, oil on panel, 24 x 32 inches Konigsberg is a conceptual realist who works across media and paintin...
Oil, Panel
Incident: Large Framed Vertical Luminist Style Oil Landscape Painting
By Leigh Palmer
Located in Hudson, NY
Oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches This large vertical painting of an expansive pastoral landscape was created by artist Leigh Palmer a few years after his move to the Hudson River Valley...
Linen, Oil
Creek Meets River: Hudson River School Landscape Painting of Water and Mountains
By Jane Bloodgood-Abrams
Located in Hudson, NY
Modern Luminist, Hudson River School landscape painting on canvas of a creek and river meeting around a forest bend with mountains in the distance "Where Creek Meets River" by Jane Bloodgood-Abrams, painted in 2021 Horizontal landscape painting, 36 x 48 inches unframed with white painted sides wired on reverse for easy hanging Artist's signature is located on lower left This modern Hudson...
Oil, Panel
Opening No. 51 (Modern, Hudson River Landscape Painting in Romanticist Style)
By Leigh Palmer
Located in Hudson, NY
Contemporary landscape oil painting reminiscent of Hudson River School & Romanticist painters oil on canvas 40 x 48 inches Highly romantic (yet modern) Hudson River oil landsca...
Canvas, Oil
The Way In Light (Traditional Realist Oil Landscape of Stone Wall Path)
By Susan Hope Fogel
Located in Hudson, NY
"A Way in Light" by Susan Hope Fogel oil on canvas panel 9 x 12 inches, 14.5 x 17 inches in gold leaf frame wire on reverse for easy installation signature in lower left Susan Hope...
Canvas, Oil
Opening No. 50 (Abstract Landscape Painting on Canvas in Romanticist Style)
By Leigh Palmer
Located in Hudson, NY
Contemporary, abstracted landscape reminiscent of Hudson River School & Romanticist painters oil on canvas 40 x 48 inches Romantic (yet modern) Hudson River oil landscape painting of a vast field in the foreground with a red and blue sunset sky in the background. This painting is of a horizontal orientation and is finished with an olive green border painted directly onto the canvas. The edges are finished with the same color, so no additional frame required here. Once a hard edge realist painter, the artist eschews those details, letting the stroke of his brush and moody palette leave an abstract implication of the landscape. In the Openings series, Palmer integrates the frame into the painting. This element contributes to the narrative, suggesting the viewer is inside looking out. We are not a part of the landscape, rather we are a peaceful witnesses to nature that will transcend even our own existence and continue to change with the seasons long after we have passed. We are romanced by Leigh Palmer's unique ability to pare down and find the true essence of the landscape, gently veiled through his own soul. We are proud to have exhibited his work since the inception in 1991. Artist Statement: My paintings are based on observation of the landscape in the Hudson River Valley where I live, and are improvised in the studio; the images are found or discovered in my memory of familiar places and developed during the painting process. Human beings do not appear, but their presence is felt in the marks left on the ground (furrows, fence rows, roads), and sometimes in the air (smoke, haze). About the artist: In 1987, Leigh Palmer moved with his family from suburban Duxbury, Massachusetts, to Tivoli, New York, a quiet town on the Hudson River, north of New York City. His subject matter shifted to the sprawling hills and countryside of the Hudson Valley. “I wanted to respond to the new landscape I was seeing, to catch something of the feeling I had just before dark,” says Palmer. “I took a lot of photographs, but I was happier with the paintings I created from memory.” Leigh Palmer has been represented by Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson, NY for over 25 years. Resume: EXHIBITIONS 2013 - 2017 Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson NY 2011 Graficas Gallery, Nantucket MA 2010 Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson NY 2009 Bachelier-Cardonsky Gallery, Kent CT 2008 Bachelier-Cardonsky Gallery, Kent CT Four Starr Gallery, Stonington CT 2007 Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson NY 2005 Bachelier-Cardonsky Gallery, Kent CT 2004 Segalas Gallery, Bernardsville NJ 2003, 04 Bachelier-Cardonsky, Gallery Kent CT 2000, 01, 03 Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson NY 1999 Barbara Singer Fine Art, Cambridge MA 1999, 98 Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson NY 1997 The Main Street Gallery, Nantucket MA 1996 Randall Tuttle Fine Arts, Woodbury CT 1995 James Cox...
Canvas, Oil
