Merged Lifestyles of Kachemak Bay
Life on the Bay has so many chapters; each of these 17 paintings represents the first line of a chapter, or even an entire book. Through the short history of recent settlement, Kachemak Bay drew a collection of individuals, tough and creative. Each person brought with them what they knew from their home land and applied it to an unsettled landscape, geographically unique.

From the Head of the Bay 3 big rivers flow from the Harding Ice Field, across flats that in summer are covered in rich salt grass. Several species of salmon swim up these rivers, and spawn in little clear tributaries. From here the Bay extends out to Cook Inlet rich in fish. The South shore, though rugged, was actually settled because the bays offered shelter for fishing boats. The Homer side attracted farmers and ranchers. In the summer some turned their cattle out on the salt grass and went fishing where they actually made money.

Being the daughter of this generation of adventurers I had the opportunity to experience the change from wilderness to the modern world. I had a horse and a boat since childhood; it really began when I was ten, I was Dad's deckhand, gillnet fishing in Cook Inlet. That same year I got to go to the Head of the Bay, my friend Alray and I were flown up in a Super Cub, by his Dad, Jay Carol, who owned Homer Air. A rancher there was holding some packhorses for us to take to a Homer pasture; we were landed on the beach. Freedom was a horse, the landscape was for the taking and with a big rowing skiff the coast line was an open road.

I was born an artist from a genetic line up of artists. My Mother Diana Tillion for one was well known in her own right. I went to Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo California and studied animal science and art. Without being entirely aware of it, I have pursued art and its expression my whole life. In the early eighties I went to the Art Student League in New York City, searching for the Holy Grail of Art. I found it, a personal view; it is how I express the world as I see it.

Marian Beck

View the paintings on Marian's Art site