Beck’s plein air and studio paintings have evolved as his art has matured. “I trust myself. I think less and respond more,” he says. The paintings done from life are a reaction to what it’s like to be there. There is a bit of call and response to them, an immediacy. His studio paintings are freed from those confines and fed by imagination and experience. In all of his work, the viewer senses a context, a before and after.

Beck’s resume includes solo exhibitions at the James A. Michener Art Museum, the Maine Maritime Museum, and the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie. Most recently, Beck’s paintings were included in exhibitions at the Albany Institute of History and Art, the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, and The Woodmere Art Museum. In 2025, the Maine Maritime Museum will host a special exhibition of Beck’s painting “Out of Time,” acquired by the museum earlier this year.

Robert Beck was awarded the Philadelphia Sketch Club Medal for Contribution to the Arts, elected a Signature Member of the American Society of Marine Artists, and named a Phillips Mill Honored Artist. He is a member of the Salmagundi Club. His work has been shown at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, the National Arts Club in New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Much of Beck’s career has focused on Bucks County, New York, and Maine. He is currently documenting the cultural underpinnings of Manhattan’s Upper West Side with a renewed emphasis on painting from life. “I think of painting as naming what I see,” says Beck, “Our understanding is formed from common life experiences. My images are more than just about what I encounter; they are about us.” In pursuing that understanding, Beck’s observations continue to illuminate our Here and Now.