Artist Mary Beyt is more than a painter — she’s a poet as well.
I am a visual storyteller.
My paintings are portals for these narratives.
The narrative is nonlinear.
It is abstracted and self-referencing.
Characters appear, reappear and morph.
Their change is reassuring.
This six-line poem, her artist’s statement, is as surreal as her work. Beyt calls her images portraits and landscapes, but certainly not in any traditional sense. From a distance, the shape of one of her portraits may be the back of a neck and head, billowing with a Marge Simpson coiffure. Entwined in the curling tendrils of hair are birds, bluebells, fronds and branches — a composite of information about her subject. Opaque, transparent, splattered and swirled paint is layered on to draw you in. Look closer, and there are surprises scattered throughout the images — snowmen, hands, curling nautiluses and rampant unicorns. Reminiscent of millefleur tapestries on acid or the illustration for an H.P. Lovecraft tale, this is a show worth repeat visits; you’re never sure what could be peering out from under a stenciled leaf. Opening in the side gallery of the Acadiana Center for the Arts (101 West Vermilion) during ArtWalk on June 14, Mary Beyt’s exhibit titled Portraits and Landscapes: New Works by Mary Beyt will be on display until June 30. For more information, call the ACA at 233-7060.
In rendering his ruling, District Judge John Trahan all but called the real estate developer a liar for inconsistencies in his accounts of what prompted him to punch a school teacher unconscious.
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He’s a singer. A songwriter. A piano man. A family man. He’s even got his own Wikipedia entry. He’s David Egan. And he knows ancient secrets about the monolithic stones of Stonehenge that he’s not willing to share.
Artist Mary Beyt is more than a painter — she’s a poet as well. 
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