Working: An Artist Paints Places Where People Get Things Done

For his first solo exhibition with 13FOREST, Paul Beckingham surveyed local businesses, restaurants and workshops to find locations that presented an atmosphere of welcoming disarray. The resulting series of paintings captures Beckingham’s fondness for spaces that tell stories, blending nostalgia with just the right amount of grit.

After being laid off from his computer-engineering job in 2021, Beckingham felt ready to make a change and decided to try his hand at painting full time. Outside of the sterile cubicles in which he had spent the majority of his working life, Beckingham embraced the physicality and playfulness of his new occupation and relished the sense of accomplishment in a finished painting. When searching for subjects for his new series, Beckingham was drawn to spaces where similar work took place, where people experienced the satisfaction of a typewriter repaired, a book shelved or makeup applied.

The title of this exhibition is styled after oral historian Studs Terkel’s Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. The groundbreaking 1974 text compiles interviews with working people across industries and economic classes, and Terkel’s observations about the significance that work holds in our lives are as salient as ever. The book’s central tenet is best summarized by one of the interviewees: “[Work] is about a search . . . for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life, rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.” Beckingham’s latest series of paintings offers snapshots of spaces where people search for that meaning, while furthering his own search for meaningful work.