Born in 1960 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Rick Beerhorst grew up in an evangelical community in this Midwestern town. A religious upbringing that deeply shaped the mystical quest he expresses in his paintings.
To escape a troubled family environment, the young boy set up a workshop in the basement of his house—a protective bubble that allowed him to flee reality through creation. Fascinated by creatures of all kinds, he would lose himself in nature to draw animals. Another gateway to the imaginary was the television shows of the 1970s, which he watched obsessively—perceptible references in his art.
As a young man, Rick Beerhorst looked up to his artist uncle as a role model: art represented a possible horizon, a tangible perspective. While at university, he quickly abandoned his architectural studies to pursue visual arts at a school in New York. It was a revelation: the life of a New York artist was his calling, and the artistic scene of SoHo embraced him immediately.
Rick Beerhorst’s painting resonates with Art Brut and Naïve Art movements. An inspired outsider, he has devoted his career to exploring a universal spirituality through painting. The religious symbols adorning his works belong to a surrealist universe born from the subconscious. His erotic references serve as a rebellion against a puritan adolescence, torn between Christian taboos and sublimated desires.
For him, the artist’s mission is to transcend the material world, like an alchemist transforming lead into gold. Beerhorst dons the robes of a modern-day shaman when he asserts that "painting is the place where the visible and the invisible meet."
