You can still see the sparkle in Marion Beals’ eyes.
The lifelong local artist, a Camas native, died on Dec. 22, but a friendly self-portrait is perched on the reception desk at the Clark County YWCA on upper Main Street in Vancouver.
Her gaze is confident and maybe a little sly. She’s peering out from under a big blue hat. The busy background is heavily textured with yellows and oranges and blues — suggesting a life crammed full of passion, activity and accomplishment.
“She was a whirling dervish,” said Krista Liles. “The energy in this woman was really palpable. Not everyone could keep up with her, even at age 95.”
Liles, the Y’s assistant director of development, met Beals in 2005 when the aging artist was looking to preserve her legacy. She wanted to make sure her works were appreciated, displayed and remembered — and she learned about the YWCA’s progressive programs from her neighbor, Don Gardner, who volunteered as a court-appointed special advocate working with abused and neglected children.
“She was sold on us,” said Liles. “She fell in love with what we do, and she wanted to support us.”
So Beals wound up giving the YWCA her entire collection — approximately 200 paintings of all sorts, from bucolic barnyard scenes to enormous rocky abstractions hinting at a dynamic inner world.
The Y has made about $4,000 so far by selling Beals’ paintings. Originally handled by Portland gallery and broker Murdock Collections, the paintings are now being sold through Divine Consign, a nonprofit furniture store in downtown Vancouver. A rotating sampling of Beals artworks is on display on the downstairs level there.
Local girl
Beals was born Marion Louise Emily Ackerman on April 9, 1914, in Camas. Her father, Frank, was a marble-setter and carver who worked on the Vista House at Crown Point at the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge. A small island in the river, just off the Camas’ western town line (and the old Ackerman property) was named Ackerman Island in his honor.
Frank encouraged his daughter’s interest in drawing when she was a girl. Her first formal artistic training was at the Advertising Art School in Portland.
Marion married Chester Beals in 1936, and the couple built a home on acreage that was given to them as a wedding present. But Chet, as he was known, entered the Navy in 1942 and they moved to the San Francisco area, where she studied palate-knife painting.
“This technique was a liberating force, a vital transformation from the precise representational work” that she’d been trained to do, according to a Beals quote included in a biography provided by the Y. Painting with a palate knife is a little like spreading butter or jam — leading to a thickly textured, three-dimensional feel.
“The palate knife was definitely her favorite,” said Liles. “She liked her artwork to be chunky.”
Beals studied with several art teachers and was inspired by moving around the country many times with Chet — setting up homes and absorbing landscapes everywhere from Antioch, Calif., to Prince George, B.C., to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She liked to say she had an “eidetic” memory — meaning a photographic memory for detail that served her well as she painted the places where she’d traveled.
“She had a rocks phase, a bridges phase, an Asian phase,” Liles said. “She did some small portraits of the faces of children. But mostly she did nature themes.”
For example, there’s a glowing tribute to her native landscape called “Prune Hill Hayfield in Evening Light,” which Beals wrote was an attempt to preserve a “once beautiful landscape … as the bulldozers slowly moved in for more development in Camas.“
The couple had returned home to Camas in 1977. They never had children. They built themselves a new home they called “ChetMar” — including a big studio for Beals. She worked there for the next 19 years. Chet, a Camas Public Library trustee, died in 2004 at age 91, and his widow eventually moved to the Waterford at Fairway Village, a retirement community in Vancouver. But even then, Liles said, she lived independently and never wanted to slow down.
“She was this tiny little woman who was running at 100 miles an hour,” Liles said.
Except when she was out for her daily walk with her girlfriends, apparently; Liles said Beals was “always looking around” and would stop the perambulating procession to stare at grass, rocks, clouds and trees.
Art appreciation
Beals was a big fan of art shows and she wanted to boost the practice, Liles said. She was frustrated that there weren’t enough venues for local artists to show their work, and not long before her death she threw her support behind former state Rep. Val Ogden’s efforts to get a regional center for the arts built.
“She believed in art as an institution, and she wanted the arts recognized and celebrated,” Liles said.
Beals died on Dec. 22 of natural causes, Liles said. A handful of her works are still on display at the Y’s office in Main Street — including a towering triptych of Columbia River basalt and a peaceful country-lane scene with some interesting fence-shadow textures — and many more can be seen at Divine Consign.
From March 6 to the end of April, the Battle Ground Art Alliance will show her work at the new Battle Ground Library.
“She was always interested in showing her work,” said Liles. “She’d be really pleased at all this attention.”
Scott Hewitt: 360-735-4525 or scott.hewitt@columbian.com.
