Gallery Hours:
Hours 11-6
Thursday-Monday (closed Tuesday & Wednesday)

The Quicksilver Mine Co.
6671 Front St. (Hwy. 116)
Downtown Forestville

PHONE: 707.887.0799
FAX: 707.887.0146
MAIL: P.O. Box 844
Forestville, CA 95436

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The Quicksilver Mine Co.

Paul Beattie - Abstract Realist

A rare exhibition at Quicksilver

February 5 - March 13, 2005

The Quicksilver Mine Co. in Forestville presents a rare opportunity for art lovers to see an exquisite selection of graphite drawings, mixed media paintings and sculpture by Healdsburg artist Paul Beattie beginning on February 5th. Beattie, who died in 1988, was profoundly influenced by the sciences of astronomy, physics, and the cosmos, and created an incredible body of work reflecting a lifelong melding of art, astronomy, artistic vision and scientific focus.

Born in Michigan in 1924, Beattie began his art career at the Detroit Society to Arts and Crafts in the mid 1940's. Later in Greenwich Village, New York, he continued working and exhibiting, culminating is a solo show at the prestigious Hansa Gallery in 1954. Moving to San Francisco in the mid-1950's—during what later became known as the "Beat Revolution"—he collaborated with many fellow artists, experimenting with collage, sculpture, constructions, press work, light shows, film making, and even jamming on his saxophone in North Beach night clubs. During this time he exhibited (his art) in several innovative San Francisco galleries of the Beat Era: The East and West and The 6 in 1955, the New Mission in 1962, and the Batman in 1963 and 1964. The Beattie family moved north to Healdsburg in 1963 where he continued to create art, reflecting his interest in Abstract Expressionism and building on the work he had done in New York and San Francisco. Throughout the next two decades he continued to exhibit his work, including group and solo shows at the L.A. Institute of Contemporary Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The Exhibit at Quicksilver represents just a fraction of the Beattie collection. Finely detailed graphite and pen and ink drawings of planets and celestial events, beautifully rendered small landscapes, large mixed media acrylic paintings, and smaller sculpture will be exhibited. This is a rare opportunity to see what fellow artist Raymond Barnhart called "just a sampling of an enormous body of work...lost to us in the midst of an unbelievably productive career, (by) a man who has a...style and subject matter of his own, and a great diversity of media. Beattie is a genius...whose work is just waiting to be discovered..."

This Exhibition opens with a Reception on Saturday, February 5th from 4—6 p.m.

More About Paul

Bakers Dozen 2008

click on images for larger views

Paul Beattie's drawings explore with particular success the nebulous, borderline area between fact and mystical vision...addressing its similarities to the processes and "language" of drawing itself.
—Thomas Albright, San Francisco, 1980

The play of line against field, color against neutral grays, light vs. dark, relief vs. flatness evokes greater and lesser sensations of movement and repose, energy and stasis, structure and chaos.
—Thomas Albright, San Francisco, 1980