The Disappearance of Ford Beckman

When the economy sours, news anchors talk of housing and manufacturing, of hedge funds and barrels of oil. They generally don’t discuss the lives of artists, and how their careers are crushed into a dull oblivion. If artists survive the fiscal and emotional shakedown, they steady themselves as adjuncts in the Midwest, they design for architectural firms. They take corporate commissions and they sit on city planning boards. They might show again, but this time in coffee shops or farmers’ markets.

Artists fade, but they don’t disappear. Not the way Ford Beckman disappeared, at least. Beckman enjoyed heights few artists attain, and then no one in the art world could find him.

When Beckman’s name surfaced at showings, it was met with shoulder shrugs. Dealers scanned floors, looking for Beckman’s trademark velvet slippers, which he wore to exhibitions. They’d heard about financial issues, but they knew him as a man of resources. Where, they wondered, was Ford Beckman?

Beckman, now fifty-six, has been hiding in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where, until recently, he has been serving donuts for seven dollars an hour. A look into his eyes will tell you what you already know: there isn’t a more punishing zero than the sugary naught of a Krispy Kreme Hot Original Glazed. And yet Beckman is emerging, and doing so in one of the worst economic climates of our times. It’s a move that he feels particularly prepared to undertake.

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To most in the art world, Ford Beckman came out of nowhere, when in fact he had been a lesser star in two different realms: golf and fashion.

Born in 1952, “Clancy” Beckman, as he was then known, was raised in a world of extremes. As a child, he and his brother ping-ponged between their divorced parents. His mother, an artist, lived in a meager two-bedroom bungalow in Florida; his father, “Spook” Beckman, an aloof, gum-chewing radio personality, owned a mansion in Ohio. Early on, Ford found peace in the midst of polarization, and one could argue that he even learned to generate the effect—a rhythm that still dictates his life.

Throughout his adolescence, painting came so naturally to Ford he didn’t think much of it. His art teachers marveled at his propensity for abstract work. Beckman says he has always sensed a complex relationship between colors, textures, and shapes. But instead of yielding to the siren’s call of aestheticism, he chose to perfect his golf swing. For years, Beckman practiced daily, and played in junior tournaments all over the world.

Just like his paintings, Beckman is something of a contradiction. He’s a heavy-set man, yet he gestures lightly and speaks quickly, like an excited teenager. He tells me that in the...