‘Ladder Red’ (2021) has a bold red diagonal ladder, dividing the picture plane. As the eye travels from one corner to the other, the ladder implies a journey, progress and movement. However, in Beattie’s paintings the steps do not go anywhere, often stopping mid-air, the ladder occupies an in-between. The artist’s many manifestations of steps, stairs and ladders is both a painterly and philosophical project. Each rudimentary architectural element has individual characteristics which remain intriguingly familiar. Obsessive repetition and variation of the emblematic steps has become a metaphorical vehicle as a mental link to another space.

Beattie’s paintings reveal what can be seen — the visible image, and what cannot — the field of energy which makes a painting potent. The latter speaks to a heritage of formal abstraction: the experiential, immediacy, physicality and scale of a painting remains at the forefront. The paintings mark a confluence of language and process. Beattie’s paintings communicate a psychological state, ‘The artist’s inner life is encoded in the movement and substance of the paint.’