Heaths' show gives Art Beat a bookend celebration

It’s like a reunion of sorts, and just in time too.

During the last few weeks of Eric and Sandra Outram’s ownership of Art Beat Gallery, they thought that their final show — during the final ArtWalk of the season, too — should feature someone with whom they had a good history.

After thinking for a while, they decided on not just one person, but three.

“When we decided to do this, we wondered who we would like for our last one,” Eric recalled. “The Heaths were a good choice. They’ve exhibited with us for as long as we’ve had the gallery. As a family — always as a family.”

The Heaths are known as the father, mother and daughter team that gets together every Sunday to paint. Fran and Mel have a son as well, but his art is music, so Eric laughed that he must be the black sheep of the family. The three Heaths have been with Art Beat since the very beginning.

“We’ve done well with their work. We’ve sold a lot of it over the years.”

The cultural tradition first started with Mel, now in his 80s.

“Mel is a master of composition,” Eric gushed, pointing out the details in the artist’s work called Gull Flight - Cornwall. “You see? Not many people would dream about putting a seagull in the foreground — a huge seagull in the foreground — of a painting, and yet, that works! It’s just amazing.”

To be fair, there are actually two huge seagulls in the foreground, but together they still leave enough space to see the architecture of the great houses on the coastline behind them. It’s a unique perspective, for sure, and Mel has enough finesse to give the birds quirky facial expressions. It doesn’t seem like that should be realistic but he pulls it off.

That’s the kind of prowess with a brushstroke that one should expect after almost 70 years of practice.

When Mel married Fran, the passion for painting rubbed off.

“She grows flowers, loves flowers, has a fabulous garden … and paints everything she grows, I think!”

Fran has great, vibrant colours in her works, the most striking difference between her work and Mel’s — that and subject matter, of course.

Daughter Karen is in her 50s but has her dad’s eye for composition while often adding in the floral elements like her mother. She has a piece with a raven in it, however, that makes you just want to reach out and brush its feathers.