This Great Stage of Fools
The title of Beal’s 2016 show at The Fine Art Society, This Great Stage of Fools, took its name from Shakespeare’s King Lear. Each of the works took inspiration from Shakespeare’s great tragedy and there are two dominant sets of imagery amongst the paintings according to Edward Lucie-Smith, one of the “idea of the Fool as the hero of the play, rather than the king” and the other of “the presence of nature, the background in which the tragedy of the clown is played out.”
Beal wrote at the time "I decided to dive into the play in the hope of producing a set of theatrical paintings… I did not want my paintings to be mere illustrations of the text but to use some of its powerful iconography as a starting point from which to examine ideas of human blindness, folly and disorientation."
An online version of the exhibition catalogue can be found here.
I stumbled when I saw, 2015
105 x 85cm
Oil on canvas
Little world of man, 2015
75 x 115cm
Oil on canvas
Idle weeds, 2015
65 x 50cm
Oil on canvas
The King's Marrotte, 2015
45 x 35cm
Oil on canvas
I see it feelingly, 2015
45 x 35cm
Oil on canvas
A Man May Rot Even Here, 2015
180 x 140cm
Oil on canvas
The Fool's Marotte, 2015
45 x 25cm
Oil on canvas
I Want no Eyes, 2015
225 x 180cm
Oil on canvas
Sweeten my Imagination, 2015
105 x 85cm
Oil on canvas
Much pined away, 2015
35 x 30cm
Oil and acrylic on board
Sunshine and rain at once, 2015
77 x 61cm
Oil on canvas
Shut up Your Doors, 2015
225 x 180cm
Oil on canvas
Every inch a king, 2015
35 x 25cm
Oil on canvas