‘Top Up’ (2013) features steps in blocks and the rungs of a ladder. Steps are an enduring motif in Beattie’s practice. The artist’s many manifestations of the stacked shape is both a painterly and philosophical project. Each rudimentary architectural element has individual characteristics which remain intriguingly familiar. The dynamic diagonal form divides the picture plane, as the eye travels from one corner to the other, implying journeys, progress and movement. However, in Beattie’s paintings the stairs do not go anywhere, often stopping mid-air, the steps occupy an in-between. 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.’