Biography
Beth Tacular is a non-binary, queer artist who uses a meditative, intuitive drawing process to explore their visceral experiences of grief and loss, gender and embodiment, the passage of time, and their sensory and energetic interconnectedness with the natural world.
As they have moved through multiple transitions, losses and changes over the last several years, their art practice has been a transcendent and steadying experience for them, as they contend with their bewilderment at the profundity of existing in their specific body in this moment in time.
Tacular received a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Communication with a Studio Art Focus from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master of Arts in Visual Art and Social Change from North Carolina State University.
They currently live and work in Durham, North Carolina.
Artist Statement
Fetish.
As in, an amulet.
As in, an object of protection in a time of despair.
As in, an object of power, reminding us of ours.
As in, a mirror to peer into, to see yourself reflected back – not in the way you look to a capitalist, white supremacist, transmisogynist, ableist system, but how you look to a tree, to a dragonfly, to a mycelial network, to the stars, to your microbiome, to me.
As in, a message from the ancestors, a channeling of their deepest desires for how we might live our lives, remedy what we can, while we still can.
As in, a thing that contains many things. The body as fetish, as amulet.
As in, an expression of our terror, the residue of our fierceness, of our ecstasy, the wet spot on the sheets, the blood on the sword.
To make this work, I enter into a meditative, trancelike state and let my hand be led until the drawing is complete. I have aphantasia, meaning I lack the ability to picture anything at all inside my “mind’s eye”, so this process is my only way of making visible my inner vision. I am always surprised by what reveals itself. Sometimes I am soothed; sometimes I am terrified. I make these drawings from a place of both deep reverence and lighthearted bafflement at the absurdity of the mess we humans find ourselves in, that I find myself in. But mostly I’m just staying present and laying down the endless evidence of my awe at the profundity of existing here and now, in this corporeal body, in this energy body, in the body of community and the body of the earth. The bliss and horror of existing in this moment, in the body of the universe, and also existing, as we do, forever outside of space and time. I love having a body. I take great pleasure in my body, and in other beings’ bodies, but my body is also often a site of pain and grief and is the place where I experience the wide breadth of felt experiences in all their bewildering complexity.
Drawing like this has carried me through periods of deep grief, through transitions that have been devastating, self-shattering, and at times, sublime. I have grappled with the physicality of being a birthing and nursing parent of a child who struggled almost impossibly to eat, of freefalling through losses and heartbreaks in quick succession, of coming to terms with time’s ravages on my body, of facing acute and chronic illness, of living through my body’s ever-unfolding experience of gender and sexuality, of navigating, with all of you, the minefields of three years of a global pandemic. My quiet, ritualistic habit of rhythmically moving my hand across the paper, viscerally transmuting my lived experience into manifest form, has been a portal, a tunnel safely through.
I lay these drawings down as markers on the trail, to help me remember who I am under my skin, to keep me grateful for the chance to have a body, to live a life. Each drawing becomes a fetish: a divinatory transmission through the body, and a multilayered reflection on what it is to have a body, in all its multiplicity. We are all mortal, vulnerable, sometimes visibly wounded, but we are also timeless, perfect and exalted.
Curriculum Vitae
Education
2005
MA Visual Art and Social Change, NC State University, Raleigh, NC
2003
Visionary Arts Intensive with Alex and Allyson Grey, Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY
1998
BA Visual Communication, Studio Art Focus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2023
F E T I S H, Lump Projects, Raleigh, NC
2006
Milky Sinister, Bickett Gallery, Raleigh, NC
2005
Fantasmadiculous: Seemingly Benign Paintings, Litmus Gallery, Raleigh, NC
Selected Group Exhibitions
2022
The Love Letter, Lump Projects, Raleigh, NC
Future Fakers, Lump Projects, Raleigh, NC
2021
Outside the Box Art Fair, Durham Armory, Durham, NC
Drawing Room Outpost at Lump, Raleigh, NC
2019
Group Show, The Carrack, Durham, NC
CEF Member Show, Durham, NC
2018
Festival for the Eno, Durham, NC
2006-2019
Sold art online and from the merchandise table, as part of international touring band, Bowerbirds
2008
Group Hug, Lump Gallery, Raleigh, NC
2007
Prints Gone Wild!, Supreme Trading NYC, Brooklyn, NY
Minus Sound Research (MSR2), Fuse, Chapel Hill, NC
Backwoods Golden Gigantic, Wootini Gallery, with Eric Amling, Matt Lafleur, Chapel Hill, NC
The Dinosaur Show, Designbox, with Casey Porn and David Eichenberger, Raleigh, NC
2006
Group Show, Bickett Gallery, Raleigh, NC
Dinosaur Party, Giant Robot San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
Potluck, Wootini Gallery, Chapel Hill, NC
The Fortress, Baltimore Art Expo, Baltimore, MD
After the Thaw, Designbox Gallery, Group exhibition with Casey Porn and David Eichenberger, Raleigh, NC
Deaths, University of Virginia Off Grounds Gallery, Group exhibition with Team LUMP, Charlottesville, VA
Treat Parade, Bickett Gallery, Raleigh, NC
Bunker Than Thou, The bemisUNDERGROUND, at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE
Awards
Awarded the Artist Support Grant, from Durham Arts Council, 2022
Awarded the Culture and Animals Foundation Grant, 2006
Summer Fellowship in Visual Journalism, Poynter Institute for Media Studies, 1998-1998