Looking Back

Beth Dacey is an American figurative painter whose work is built from vintage black-and-white photographs, most often from the 1930s through the 1960s. She paints from found images and family snapshots, drawn to pictures with an underlying tension, a half-told moment, or a subtle human distance. In many paintings, faces are softened or cropped away so the viewer reads the scene through posture, gesture, and setting rather than portrait likeness. Dacey is especially attentive to clothing and body language, using the drape of fabric and the tilt of a head or shoulder to carry the narrative.

Dacey studied painting at the museum schools at deCordova (Lincoln, Massachusetts) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She holds BA and MA degrees from Boston College and taught writing and literature there for a period before turning fully toward painting. She is a member of the SoWa Artists Guild, the Copley Society of Art, and the Newburyport Art Association. Dacey lives in Newbury, Massachusetts, maintaining a studio overlooking the Great Marsh, and she has also kept a studio presence in Boston’s South End.