Artist Spotlight: Andria Beighton
Melbourne, Australia-based painter Andria Beighton is one of 12 artists exhibiting with Vertical Gallery at this year’s Aqua Art Miami, which descends on South Beach from December 3-7.
Andria reinterprets midcentury design aesthetics for a new millennium, fusing archetypal atomic-age shapes and motifs with bold, flattened perspectives and ultra-contemporary color palettes. The self-taught artist draws on her lifelong fascination with the textiles, décor and architecture that defined domestic living between the 1930s and 1970s: signatures of her work include neo-nostalgic still lifes, floral wallpapers and form-follows-function dream houses.
Andria made her Vertical Gallery debut as part of our 2024 Holiday Group Show, her very first group exhibition on U.S. soil. In the latest installment of our web-exclusive Artist Spotlight series, Andria previews the work she’s exhibiting at Aqua and looks back at the development of her signature style.
Vertical Gallery: Tell us about what you’re showing at Aqua Art Miami 2025.
Andria Beighton: I wanted to put together a collection that will be fun for the Miami vibe, so I’m showing a range of cocktails in sort of a midcentury style — my graphic style.
Why cocktails?
I’ve done cocktails for fairs before, and they’re fun to make, because they've got lots of tiny little sections of color. People love them. I've had quite a few people display them over their bar cart, which is really cute.
A cocktail is like an artwork in itself, with all its different elements. There’s something special about a cocktail served up in a beautiful glass with beautiful garnishes. It's interesting to me to pull out all the different shapes, like the twist of the orange peel or the curve of the glass. I work with background colors that highlight those elements, and that work well in people's homes. It’s important to think about the collector’s perspective.
I’ve made 12 canvases for Miami — lots of different shapes, lots of different glasses. They're framed in a light-colored hardwood, so they're ready to go. There are martinis and Aperol spritz, and because people go wild for the negronis, I've done those in three different colors and two different glasses. With a negroni, the orange peel is kind of the hero of the artwork, so I put it against quite a deep navy or peacock background to make the drink pop.
Where did your fascination with midcentury design originate?
A lot of my interest comes from textiles. My mom worked in the rag trade, and we were always sewing. I started to collect fabric from my grandparents, and I became kind of obsessed with the patterns — the colors and the shapes. I was always drawn to record covers and posters from that time, too. There were so many objects in my grandparents’ homes I wanted to know more about.
Your style is so exacting — so precise. How has it evolved over time?
I've always known how I wanted to paint, and how I wanted my work to look. It took me probably 20 years off and on, trying different things. I was painting with gouache for a while, which I found was the closest way to get the kind of flat, matte finish I wanted. I'd never been able to get the right finish with the acrylics.
Five or six years ago, I was like “Okay, I'm gonna try [acrylics] again, in a larger scale.” Something just clicked, and it started working. It felt like I was finally able to create what I've seen in my mind for my entire life, you know? I could get it onto the canvas. Since then, I've been doing as much work as I can, just getting it all out.
People often message me: How do you do this? How do you do that? What do you use for this? I can tell you, but it doesn't mean you're gonna be able to do it. It's a lot of time, a lot of patience and a lot of experimenting along the way to get it right.
What do you hope the Miami audience takes away from experiencing your work up close?
I just hope it makes them happy. I mean, they’re cocktails — they don't have a huge meaning behind them. But people often come to me and tell me stories. They say “Oh, the negroni! That’s our favorite cocktail,” or “That was the lockdown cocktail we made together every week to get through the pandemic.” People bring their own associations to the work, and that’s always nice.
Follow Andria on Instagram: @andriabeighton