Join the Beaufort Historic Site in the Mattie King Davis Art Gallery on March 27 from 4–6 PM for an Art Opening celebrating featured artist BF Reed. Guests are invited to enjoy light snacks, refreshments, and an evening surrounded by stunning artwork. This opening reception marks the beginning of BF Reed’s exhibition as the Mattie King Davis Featured Artist, on view from March 27 through May 27.
About BF Reed:
Award-winning artist BF Reed had the good fortune to receive a scholarship the respected Moore College of Art. She later transferred and completed her formal studies at the prestigious Tyler School of Art, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree. Both schools had rigorous and demanding programs but with different focuses. This divergence in educational view point enhanced and completed her overall background. This education launched her professional career as Medical Illustrator at Temple University’s Medical School. There, she created exquisitely detailed images of animal and human biological and surgical illustrations and procedures. As a “visual translator”, she converted complex scientific information into a visual form to address the needs of an array of health science professionals.
Later, armed with a degree in Illustration and Graphic Design, she tapped into her well-honed artistic talent to work as a graphic artist/illustrator. With her creative flair, she visualized and designed captivating images, by hand and later with software, for marketing logos, posters, brochures and magazines for an assortment of major entertainment events. Throughout it all, she painted. She traveled extensively and visually recorded her destinations in many paintings and drawings. Expanding upon her original formal education, she developed a deeper appreciation and understanding of image making and the study of light. Light captivates BF Reed and she often looks for a way to show how light defines the form. This formal education and occupation developed an affinity for detail that enjoyably still shows in her realistic art work today. Her work is sometimes referred to as hyper real though Bf Reed does not agree with this assignment of terms to her work. She notes that it is, “just realistic.” Perhaps as a respite from this realism, BF Reed also creates large abstracts that have no bases in reality. Just strong design. She notes that this is where her mind goes to rest. It rests in a world of just shapes and forms and colors.
Her masterful paintings reflect the tireless years that she has devoted to creating and developing her craft. Her extensive portfolio of paintings reveals the full range of her current expertise because she admits to enjoying more creative learning and growth. BF Reed is known for skillfully captures the immense power of the raging ocean crashing ashore or the graceful dance of multi-colored butterfly Koi, while her stunning abstracts scream for attention.
Along the way she worked as an educator, she shared her vast artistic experience with a generation of students. Exposing them to the splendor of art, art history and inspiring them to unlock their imaginations. She helped develop in them both the love and discipline of art and imagine making that many of them carried on to their adult lives. She has always been an artist. Even as a preschooler, she could often be found with pencil in hand – doing what she loved – creating.
BF Reed’s work has been accepted into many national and international competitive exhibitions and has won awards in those arenas. Her exquisite water color and pastel paintings and acrylic abstracts have been exhibited in numerous galleries across the US and internationally. Her paintings are held in various private, diplomatic and corporate collections in the US and abroad. You can find her work at New Elements Gallery in Wilmington, NC, Centerpiece Gallery in Raleigh, NC, as well as Mattie King Davis Gallery in Historic Beaufort, NC. BF Reed has earned signature membership status with the International Association of Pastel Societies, American Women Artists, Degas Pastel Society and the Pastel Society of North Carolina.