“Translating the world through my art is my greatest source of strength.”
–Fran Beallor
Artists Statement
I embrace the challenge of recreating the world through my art, but I am often surprised by the stories that emerge. The resulting work is frequently surreal and engaging. Portraits are rarely straightforward and still lifes are often “not so still” with objects falling, floating and flying. Fascinated by reflections which create worlds within worlds, I depict objects and rooms seen through the distortion of curved surfaces. The work invites you to enter into a world that is at once strange and familiar.
Ironically, we now live in a world that is both strange yet familiar. The Climate Crisis has altered our planet more quickly than predicted. Living with this shadow over us prompted me to create several drawing series; Portraits of Glaciers, Dead Horse Bay, and Ugly Fruit, are three drawing series in which I express concern for the environment, stressed by global threats. Read more about some of these works in an article on the Columbia Climate School's State of the Planet Glacierhub blog Portraits of Glaciers: Art, Identity and the Self in Retreat by Shermaine Tay
My ongoing drawing series, SELF, created over four decades , is a series of self-portraits that have become an unexpected lifetime journey. Using the vocabulary of my own forms and features, I bear witness to the changes of time on myself, but also the ways I am affected by what is happening around me, offering a broader experience of being human.
offering
“Look closely at the paintings of Fran Beallor ... you're likely to see more than meets the eye.”
–Barbara Gallo Farrell, Journalist/Editor Poughkeepsie Journal
Bio
Fran Beallor had a blast showing her 366 self portraits from 2020, and other examples of her ongoing series, SELF in a Solo Exhibition at El Barrio’s Artspace PS 109 in East Harlem, NYC in September 2022. Hung in 12 large month blocks, SELF 2020 was on view along with examples from the prior years' series and some of Beallor’s larger self-portrait paintings as well. In all over 550 drawings, paintings and prints were on display!
Beallor has been the subject of radio, in-print and online interviews, including one in Art Spiel in conjunction with her Solo Show. Feature articles and reviews have also appeared in the American Arts Quarterly, American Artist Magazine, and others. In 2020, she won the Morgan Library and Museum’s online Portrait contest with her painting, Circle Dance. She has also received a Greenshields Grant for Excellence in Realist Art.
Beallor has a long history of exhibiting her paintings, drawings and prints in NYC and beyond. Solo and group shows include the William Carlos Williams Center for the Arts, Denise Bibro Gallery, the Brattleboro Museum, the Butler Art Institute, and the Morris Museum. Corporate, public and private collections include the 9/11 Museum and the Copelouzos Museum in Athens, Greece. Beallor attended Antioch College, the Art Students League and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. She lives and works in Manhattan. Learn more about her work in Fran Beallor, Artist - a video portrait by Comice Johnson
Leadership, Curating, Community Engagement and Teaching
Fran Beallor is an artist, arts educator and independent curator with a long history of exhibiting her artwork and the work of others in her native New York City and beyond. Community, giving back and offering artists a voice through curating are at the core of her practice. Concern for the environment is at the core of her being.
In February 2025, Beallor curated Our Fragile Moment: Artists respond to the Climate Crisis and Water's Voice: Artists' Perspectives on the Dire State of Our Aquatic Ecosystems, two sister shows focusing on climate, at the Hudson Guild Galleries in Chelsea, NY. They ran through Earth Day ‘25. Beallor continued the theme by curating another exhibition in 2026. Earth in the Balance hung throughout March and April at the Interchurch Center Gallery. You can see a 3-minute video here on Beallor’s YouTube channel. Look for a forthcoming exhibition in 2027, at El Barrio’s Artspace PS 109 in Harlem, NY.
During the pandemic years, as co-president of The New York Artists Circle, a large arts organization, Beallor co-created a new website for the group, including an update to their digital gallery space called Curated Shows. In 2020, she curated Fragile Earth, the first new exhibition on the online platform, still on view. In 2022, Beallor completed the Artists Equity Curatorial Residency, culminating in a show co-curated by the participants. Shifting Balance was exhibited at Equity Gallery that fall. Also in 2023, she co-curated The SEED: the spark that sets an art life in motion at Art At First Gallery, NYC and ref-u-gee, an online exhibition of Audrey Frank Anastasi’s Forced Migration Series.
A former Artists Talk on Art (ATOA) Board member, Beallor curated panel talks for ATOA, one in conjunction with Water's Voice and Our Fragile Moment. Artists on Climate Change is available on ATOA’s YouTube page. In conjunction with the Hudson Guild shows, she created an extensive schedule of events, including artist and curator talks, workshops, and a night of Hot Climate Art Films, a special curated selection of artist films on Climate relevant topics.
Beallor has run artist support groups, and has consulted with artists to help with writing and editing statements and proposals, digital portfolio preparation, website re-design and analysis, and other business skills necessary for an art practice. Beallor teaches art to all ages, specializing in portfolio development for high school and college. Former students attend top art programs including RISD, Parsons, SCAD, Carnegie Mellon, SAIC and Boston University, as well as LaGuardia, Frank Sinatra, A&D and other arts high schools in NYC.
studio@franbeallor.com