Jeffery Becton Biography
Inspired by the tidal reaches and atmospheric weather near his Deer Isle home and the summer homes on the Blue Hill Peninsula, creates provocative photo-based digital montages, often playing with the borders between dream and reality, interior and exterior, abstraction and representation. His montages frequently contain architectural elements and objects from these vintage New England houses, many of which are part of his personal history.
Jeffery Becton (b.1947) is a pioneer in fine-art photography, Becton received an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 1976. Here he worked on the mainframe computer at Yale’s computer science lab—an experience that primed Becton to welcome the new digital tools in the mid-1980s. By the early 1990s, Becton was experimenting with the layering of visual information, living in year-round in Maine, and creating surreal scenarios evocative of that in-between milieu one inhabits when living by the sea. Becton’s work has been in numerous solo, group, and juried exhibitions, and has been highlighted in national and international publications, including the Royal Academy 2022 Summer Exhibition in London. In 2015, Marshall Wilkes (Ellsworth) published a monograph on Becton’s work, and in 2016, the Bates College Museum of Art held a solo exhibition of Becton’s large-scale monographs that traveled to Tennessee, Florida, and Virginia. Becton’s work is included in the museum collections of Bates College Museum of Art, Farnsworth Museum of Art, and Portland Museum of Art. Becton lives in Deer Isle, Maine, where he maintains a studio.
“Becton’s works are meditations on ambivalence: digital montages, beautiful and unsettling mashups, altered realities. . . .Walls, floors, and ceilings open to the elements–and to the imagination. They provide a framework but no shelter; they are lit with the clarity of memory. What we see depends on what we bring to the act of seeing: what memories, what desires, what emotions. Becton is really exploring our own permeability.”
—Deborah Weisgall, Jeffery Becton: The Farthest House
Fine Art Printing on Aluminum Becton uses an archival fine art printing technique called dye-sublimation to print his photomontages. Each print is carefully proofed by Becton to guarantee the quality of the artwork. The image is first printed onto a transfer paper using inkjet technology, and adhered to a pre-treated sheet of aluminum. The dyes are then infused into the aluminum via heat transfer. Once the dyes submerge underneath the surface, the process is complete and permanent. The prints are archival for up to 65+ years, and tested by Wilhelm imaging research. These semi-gloss fine art aluminum prints retain excellence color density and have minimal glare, so no glass is needed.
White Wood Framing Becton’s aluminum prints are handsomely floated in a Custom Wood Shadow Box with a 3.5 reveal, or a Wood Float Frame with a .25 inch reveal. No glass is used, giving the prints a tactile presence.
Press
The Art of Being Jeffery Becton
We were heading out toward Jericho Bay and Eggemoggin Reach on a clear, chilly evening last fall, just before dusk, when our captain, the artist Jeffery Becton, announced that his wife was worried he had dementia. This was right after he’d revved the rigid inflatable boat’s twin 300 horsepower engines and had us skimming along at […]
Read MoreJeffery Becton’s Invented Worlds
On a gorgeous late-August morning, artist Jeffery Becton came off his boat Sculpin, a 53-foot Selene trawler, to meet this writer at his house in Deer Isle overlooking Southeast Harbor. As we talked, he shared stories of the sea—and art. An avid seafarer from early in his life, Becton continues to find the experience fascinating and […]
Read MoreChristopher Crosman – Jeffery Becton: Passages
The late, beloved American painter, Andrew Wyeth (1917–2006), once mused about his most famous work, Christina’s World (1948, collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York), that if he had been “any good” as an artist, he would have left Christina entirely out of the picture. He realized that idea fifteen years later with Her Room (1963), which […]
Read MoreJeffery C. Becton on liminal spaces, creating emotional connections, and the power of ambiguity
Running until 31 August 2022, Between Two Worlds is an evocative showcase of two photographic artists who have a strong connection to the poetics of coastal spaces. Jeffery Becton and Andrea Hamilton are both interested in the intersection of land and sea, memory and place. In this exhibition, the pair highlight the emotional potential of […]
Read MoreJeffery Becton: Dream State
The work of Maine-based photographer Jeffery Becton melds interiors with shots of sea and sky, offering images that can come across as romantic reveries or manifestations of passing time. Using digital cameras, including the iPhone, Becton uploads images to Photoshop, where he crops, cuts and pastes pictures together. There’s a slightly Magritte-like mash-up in some, […]
Read MorePublications
Jeffery Becton: The Farthest House
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