Edmond Brooks-Beckman  (b.1987, London, UK) lives and works in London.

In 2023 Brooks-Beckman graduated from The Royal College of Art with an MA in painting. He was awarded the Valerie Beston Prize for his graduation show work Inscriptions beneath the skin, 2023. Previously he studied at Brighton School of Art where he completed his BA (2006-2009). Between 2007 and 2010 Brooks-Beckman collaborated with a collective of artists with learning disabilities, the Rocket Artists, producing a performance piece at the Sallis Benney Theatre at Tate Modern in 2010. Brooks-Beckman completed a PGCE at the IOE in 2016 and has taught art and design extensively, currently leading the foundation course at Hampstead School of Art.

Brooks-Beckman’s technique involves painting, scraping, re-working and the re-application of ‘waste’ material, often making symbolic references to his Jewish heritage and the stories he was told growing up: 

‘The act of painting often feels like a process of me just trying to get side tracked for as long as possible until I have to make those final decisions that ultimately fix the position. When I boil paintings down to their most basic structures they do follow a fairly simple westernised recipe of figure and ground.’

‘I pretty much always have a ground that I put at the bottom of the canvas, if I don’t have an actual ground then my marks or shapes always hint or are explicitly connected to this ground. The marks and shapes themselves generally gather together, clustering out of the fragmented mark making process that gets my paintings cooking, forming bodily, or mechanical type forms, which are then painted back into. I feel like this side-trackingness thing is a way to find a longer route back to these original structures. In taking that longer route maybe I’ll find a new way to deal with the same motif or maybe even a new motif.  I remember in lockdown doing the same walk and you’d get bored, you'd get to a point where google maps would be turned off and you'd walk just enough to be unsure of where you are. Which actually for me isn't that hard. Its always about trying to find new ground. But also knowing that its not about escaping, just expanding to contract again.’

- Edmond Brooks-Beckman