Monday, March 24, 2008

Beau

Most of Beau's art was made to illustrate erotic stories in gay magazines such as Advocate Men and Freshmen, which explains why I hadn't seen much of it until I got into gay porn several years ago. I really enjoy the deep, lush colors in Beau's art, and the characters' expressive faces and overt sensuality practically force your imagination to invent wild and erotic scenarios around the the paintings - even if you don't know the stories he's illustrating.

Consider The Act (directly below.) Despite the wide open mouth, you could almost miss the cock in the bottom right corner of the painting - those wide, trusting eyes aren't even looking in that direction - he's focused on the face of the man whose hand is cupping his chin. And why is he kneeling, nude, when it's obvious the man standing in front of him is still dressed? Yum. The Act is my favorite painting by Beau, no doubt. But don't worry, there's plenty more.


As always, click on the images to see the full sized pictures.
Note: some are quite large.
Second Note: the names of the paintings are often taken from the story they illustrated.


The Act
by Beau



A Matter of Survival



Cherry Bomb









Blind Date



Hitchcocked



The Pastor's Son



Beer Nuts



Hung Jury



The Man Next Door



The Lord Won't Mind
(Cover Art for: One for the Gods)



Tension





There's no current website for Beau, but here's the closest thing I could find:

The World of Beau - in Erotic Art Collection's Archive. The site hasn't been updated since before Beau's first book came out in 2004, but there's lots of interesting things to check out - including an introduction into how Beau develops his paintings. There are two small collections of his art there: The Art of Beau and The Explicit Art of Beau

Beautiful Mag posted some good information on Beau, along with some excellent art work from his second book, in this article: Beau

I found a large collection of Beau's work on Area51 - unfortunately the index is broken, so the following link points you to the directory - you just have to slog through all the links. Many pictures are duplicated with larger copies, scans from the magazines with widely varying quality, cropped pictures and retouched copies that have edited or "photo-shopped" out the text of the accompanying stories. It's a lot of trouble, but I think it's worth it: Area51's Beau Collection

According to Beautiful Mag, Beau was in an auto accident in 2002, and is no longer able to paint. I consider that quite a loss to the Gay Art Community. But they also said he's taken up photography - and that's good news. I hope we see more from him soon.

Both his books, BeauMen and BeauMen2, are for sale from Amazon.com.


Enjoy!


All images © Beau.
I just admire the art.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got to pose for Buau(Kevin K.) in Los Angeles back in 1998. He was a really nice guy, very considerate, smart and did some cool non-erotic art as well.

DESCLOS Frédéric said...

HI RAFI
I am a gay artist and I mainly paint male nudes.
It will be very nice from you if you made a link to my site:
www.delos-art.com
It will help me to make me know a little more.
I am also at your disposal if you want to do a little article.
I can recover if you want photos of your choice on my site.
I will of course make a link to your blog from my site.
Best regards