alyssa marie beech is a chicago born and based artist whose practice is rooted in the process

of making and breaking rules through a multitude of approaches to drawing. beech graduated

from the school of the art institute of chicago in 2014 with a bachelors of fine arts degree with

an emphasis in art education. she currently works as a visual arts educator in chicago public

schools; beech has been teaching for 8 years and considers teaching to be an integral part of

her identity as an artist. 

alyssa views art as play, something that she can return to for meditation and decompression

from daily stressors. for the majority of her life, drawing has served as a process of learning

new technical approaches and exploring where those approaches are able to take her; it has

always been about finding a way to communicate and manage her thoughts and “over

thoughts.” through the process of mark-making, alyssa is able to create compositions of

shapes, lines, and color fields that express the way that she feels as she navigates life. as a

black, woman artist, her time is spent adhering to specific rules and regulations as she

navigates from space to space and through art-making she is able to enjoy breaking imagined

artistic rules of her own along the way.