Bridlington artist’s work goes on display at New York gallery

Mixed-media artist Bea Roberts, whose work is created in her Bridlington studio, has had one of her original artworks replicated and installed at Gallery BQE, an unconventional underground street-art gallery beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Brooklyn.

Due to the power of the Internet, Bea's artwork was spotted on her Instagram page by the gallery who contacted her to ask if they could install it.

Gallery BQE transforms the concrete spaces beneath the huge expressway into an unexpected exhibition space for contemporary and street artists.

Its deliberately unconventional setting has become part of its appeal, bringing art into one of New York's most unlikely urban spaces.

For Bea, the New York installation is the latest step in what has become a surprisingly international journey.

Bea said: “I think one of the lovely things about being an artist today is that you can be sitting in your studio on the Yorkshire coast and your work can end up absolutely anywhere.

“I’ve never really set out with a grand plan to become an international artist, although due to the style of my work, 95% of it is bought by US collectors.

“I just make the work I want to make, and I'm incredibly lucky that other people sometimes connect with it enough to want it in their lives, or, in this case, a cool Brooklyn gallery.

Bea’s mixed-media paintings often incorporate discarded and repurposed materials and have a raw, tactile quality that sits somewhere between outsider art, collage and contemporary mixed media. This independent approach seems to be finding an audience beyond the traditional gallery system.

For a Bridlington artist, that is something worth celebrating. “I'm still a Bridlington artist," she says. “I just seem to be sending bits of Bridlington out into the world.”