AFTER a career in furniture design and sales, Tommy Beaver started painting roughly 15 years ago. Beaver says: “I started col-lecting vintage artwork from the 1960s and ’70s out of Florida. … Eventually I thought, ‘I might do that.’ I didn’t even know I could paint.”

The award-winning, self-taught artist works with oils in a loose, impressionist and semiabstract style that features large brush-strokes and rich, emotive colors. Using both brushes and palette knives, he creates highly textural paintings that express the mood and energy of the moment, bring-ing careful attention to lighting and shadows.

His inspiration comes largely from the landscapes and sea-scapes of the Lowcountry. Says Beaver: “I’ve always been a real visionary-type person. Sometimes an image sticks in my mind, like a field or a marsh or Charleston city scenes. It’s such a neat city, and I try to capture the feeling and mood of it, especially late in the day.”

Beaver teaches art workshops in Georgetown and McClellanville, South Carolina. His paintings hang in private and corporate collections across the United States, and he is represented by Lowcountry Artists Gallery in Charleston and Art Harbor Gallery in Georgetown. He lives and paints in the picturesque town of McClellanville, where his studio gallery is located and open by appointment.