Painting With Beads

A painter opens a box of paints.
I open tubes of beads.

This photograph is from 2022, when my collection of glass beads was beginning to grow -and so was my exploration of glass bead mosaic. Even then, I was organizing them the way I thought about color—families of blues, greens, corals, golds and purples, with subtle variations within each one.

That’s one of the things I love most about working with beads. Blue isn’t simply blue. It can be transparent, opaque, metallic, iridescent, matte or sparkling. Two beads that look almost identical in the tube can behave completely differently when they’re placed next to one another.

Over time, I began to think of what I was doing as painting with beads.

Instead of mixing paint on a palette, I mix color, size, finish, texture and reflection directly on the surface. And because they’re glass, light becomes part of the composition too.

My bead collection has grown considerably since that photograph was taken. So have the possibilities.