ALLAN BEALY
Allan's collage practice layers vintage paper, natural and industrial imagery, and aged textures to explore memory, process, and quiet resistance to progress.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Originally from Montreal, Canada. Free time is spent between the studio, the kitchen (cooking) and the park woodlands (walking) with a lot of reading fit in between the empty parts.
(Allan Bealy, Flange, 2024, collage on paper, 11x14 inches)
How do you describe your work and practice?
I spend mornings in the studio just thinking and meditating. I look at old work, do some organising and think about first steps. I work in series, so I start with two or three pieces that begin with backgrounds of old endpapers and foxed, funky fragments that serve as a bed for the final image layer. I find these backgrounds interesting in themselves though they will never be seen.
I use a coffee or tea bath to stain and distress the images to give them a weathered vintage look that tends to unify my color palette. A piece is finished when it refuses to let you add anything further.
(Allan Bealy, Ur, 2024, collage on paper, 9x12 inches)
What inspires your art/design process?
I'm inspired by nature and conflicted about technology and "progress". That conflict inspires my work.
In terms of materials and imagery, what do you typically acquire for your practice?
I look for vintage papers and ephemera and imagery of nature and industrial technology. I go through a lot of textbooks and reference books as well as old magazines.
(Allan Bealy, The Remains of My Beautiful Day, 2025,collage on paper, 11x14 inches)
What work would you create if you had no expectation or limits?
I would probably just do more of what it is I do now. Perhaps scale up!
(Allan Bealy, Flutter, 2025, collage on paper, 11x14 inches)
Do you have a repeated ritual/rhythm or strategy when it comes to your process of making?
Lots of coffee, good music and quietly breathe in the will of the studio and the work that has gone before. No expectations, no rush.
(Allan Bealy, Babble, 2024, collage on paper,9x12 inches)
How do you see art/design changing in the near future?
I manage to ignore any notion of change in the broad scheme of things. Art is personal as well as expositional and whatever current tools to realize that goal are available are nevertheless just tools and have little to do with the artist's vision.
(Allan Bealy, Slough, 2024, collage on paper, 11x14 inches)
Thank you Allan! Check out more of his work at his instagram below.