Jim Beatrice was born in Massachusetts in 1948. Introverted and intuitive, he spent a lot of time alone, drawing and playing music. He studied clarinet, saxophone and oboe; and played in bands and orchestras. Jim's musical training has given him the ability to see the music in painting.
Just out of high school, Jim apprenticed to Boston Sculptor Alfred Duca. In 1968, he traveled across the country, stopped in Arizona for a while, and then hitchhiked to Los Angeles, where he continued painting while working as a common laborer to support himself.
Returning to Massachusetts in the 1970s, Jim entered the Massachusetts College of Art, and took classes at the Decordova Museum School. He was introduced to Henry Hensche by a friend, Al Glover, who was studying at Hensche's school in Provincetown.
Jim was awestruck by Hensche's use of color. Jim drove to the school in the truck he was living in for the Summer of in 1983, and studied fervently with Hensche for the next five years. Within that period of study, Jim met and worked with other students, and gained life-long friends.
Jim has traveled to Mississippi to paint with Tommy Thurmond, who has had a great influence on Jim's painting, and to New Mexico to paint with David Farrell and Bonita Barlow, two of New Mexico's finest artists.
"To me the act of painting is like composing music, arranging notes of color in a key of Light."