Walk on the Wild Side

Join fabric collage artist Barbara Yates Beasley as she takes a Walk on the Wild Side with this vibrant, full-color collection of some of her favorite animal portraits. In this book, which showcases the works appearing in her 2021 solo exhibition Walk on the Wild Side at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, Colorado, you'll discover portraits of animals both familiar and exotic. Beasley captures the mesmerizing gaze of a resting leopard, the winsome playfulness of a wolf pup, the majesty of a roaring African lion, and the earnest, hard-working spirit of a border collie herding his sheep. Her attention to accuracy in the physical details combines with unexpected color and pattern choices to create a work that is both realism and fantasy: a regal zebra is draped in stripes of blues from sky to indigo, and a gentle-eyed young elephant emerges in florals and polka-dots. Beasley's lifelong fascination with studying and enjoying the animal world became a full-time career after she took a class in animal portraiture from a local quilter in 2005. Since that first portrait of her dog Drew, the Colorado native has expanded her artistic vision to capture the distinct personalities of wild and domestic animals from around the world.