Patricia Beazley; 1930-2014: Prize-winning artist also active volunteer

Patricia Ann Beazley

Patricia Beazley, 83, an award-winning artist known for her skill in portraiture and in depicting family scenes and children, died Wednesday in her Sylvania Township home.

Mrs. Beazley developed complications after a series of strokes the last few years, her son, Michael, said.

She accepted commissions and she created formal portraits, such as of professors and administrators at the University of Toledo and Ohio State University. Families commissioned her to depict a mother with a baby or a montage of family scenes. On occasion, she was asked on short notice to do a portrait that could be displayed at a wake or funeral service. She created the familiar picture, “Daughter Too,” of the pig-tailed girl eating an apple on the side of Al Peake & Sons & Daughter Too produce trucks.

“Her biggest strength as an artist was she really captured the likeness,” her daughter Mary Beth said. “A friend of hers stopped by and said, ‘She captured the spirit.’ ”

Mrs. Beazley worked primarily in pastel, though she was versed in other media.

“She enjoyed anything from the still lifes to the flowers,” her son said. “Her line of pencil drawings she used to call ‘captured moments.’ She always took joy in the craft and a special pride in the reactions of the families she did work for.”

Her work has been selected for the annual Toledo Area Artists Exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art and for a Pastel Society of America exhibition and has been included in other shows at the museum and through the Athena Art Society and other groups. She received a Grumbacher Bronze Medallion, and at several exhibitions, her works were deemed best-of-show.

Her mother was an amateur artist, but Mrs. Beazley did not take an art class until she was 39. She actively resisted training as a child, she told The Blade in 1981, because “I just knew I wasn’t good enough.”

She also was active at Gesu Church and volunteered for the League of Women’s Voters — she produced a public television program featuring debates among local candidates — and on behalf of civil rights.

She’d painted a mural on the kitchen wall when the family lived in Chicago. She began sketching.

She also began to take classes at the museum and with acclaimed local artist Walter Chapman.

“It’s a small miracle,” Mrs. Beazley told The Blade in 1981. “I still can’t believe I’m being paid to do what I love to do the best.”

She was born May 5, 1930, in Chicago, to Alice and Frank McNamara. She was a 1948 graduate of Mercy High School. After she and Ben Beazley married June 28, 1952, the young family lived in Chicago and, during his service in the Coast Guard, in Indiana and Maine. They moved to Toledo in 1963 and lived many years in the Old Orchard area.

She and her husband were active in the Christian Family Movement at Gesu Church. She also was a volunteer for Mobile Meals and the Sight Center.

Surviving are her husband, Ben; daughters, Trish Beazley Sanders and Mary Beth Beazley; son, Michael Beazley, who is city administrator of Oregon; brothers, Frank and Jack McNamara; sisters, Alice Lavin and Mary Panice; nine grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 2-7 p.m. Sunday in the Walker Funeral Home, Sylvania Township. Services will be at 11 a.m. Monday in Gesu Church, where visitation will begin at 10 a.m. The family suggests tributes to Gesu Church, Hospice of Northwest Ohio, or the Toledo Museum of Art.

Contact Mark Zaborney at: mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.