ROBERTA BEAUCHAMP
Roberta was born in 1969 and was educated in Oxnard, CA. Beginning at the age of 3 1/2 years, she participated in a state pilot program for children with learning impairments. She has been attending Neighborhood Center of the Arts since 1997. Roberta's devoted family, her Catholic faith, and Hollywood and TV personalities all figure prominently in her work. Her use of bold, bright colors and forms impart a cheerful, childlike quality and reflects her joyous nature, but an unsettling quality often lurks below the surface of her images.
Her recent work draws more explicitly from her obsession with contemporary American popular culture, as she tears pages featuring stories, images and advertisements from glossy magazines and layers them with her trademark colors, shapes and letters. The models, actors, or products beneath are often distorted or disfigured, or transformed into even more garish caricatures than the medium of magazine publishing and supermarket tabloids itself demands. Roberta’s emotional responses to these cultural icons seem at times revealed by the layers and designs she applies.
