Becki Jayne Harrelson

Born in 1954, Becki Jayne Harrelson began drawing and painting as a child at age four. As a young adult, she pursued a professional interest in advertising which sustained a twelve-year career culminating as the Senior Account Manager for Mobil Chemical Company at an Atlanta ad agency.

In 1991, she left her advertising position to do her art, fulfilling her lifelong desire for freedom of artistic expression. Since that time, she has participated in several Atlanta exhibitions, two LLGAF exhibitions and completed over forty oil paintings, some of which are available on slide through the Georgia Artists Registry, Atlanta College of Art Library.

Becki Jayne is a self-taught artist and writer living and working in Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. Working primarily in oil paint, much of her past and current art explores the spiritual aspect of the human condition.

In 1991, she began development of a series of twelve drawings and Caravaggist paintings entitled, Parables. With Christianity?s dominance and influence in America, the artist is intrigued with depictions of gays and lesbians in biblical scenarios: Judas Kiss and The Crucifixion of Christ, for example. Becki Jayne is presently painting The Stoning Of The Drag Queen which shows a Christ protecting a drag queen while confronting a stoning mob. Another oil, Madonna, Lover & Son, presents a different take on family values and a future painting, The Last Supper, investigates the nuances of a gay ensemble at a DaVinci-style dinner party.

None of Becki Jayne?s Parables work has been exhibited in her ?hometown? Atlanta, the South being unreceptive to her gay narratives, especially the religious context. In March of 1998, she returned to New York for an exhibition on religious themes in gay and lesbian art at Leslie-Lohman.