Bevan Choate works predominately in the medium of acrylic palette knife painting

though sometimes he is compelled to use the occasional brush, sponge, power tool, or household item. He is a surgeon turned stroke survivor who penned and published The Stroke Artist, a tale of surviving and tackling a life-threatening event. It placed top 7 in an international writing competition along with career writers from Oxford and around the world. His true passion, however, is painting. He is completely self-taught.

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I paint because it is fun. I am moved by Carl Jungʼs theory of the daimon, or motivating spirit, that lives in us all. On a good day, painting allows me to communicate with this disembodied intelligence. On a great day, it communicates through me. Having survived a life-threating stroke, and nearly dying twice, I am intensely reminded of how career and pressures of the physical world almost completely snuffed this part out of me. In attempts to reestablish a relationship with

my daimon, I paint nearly every day. I paint what motivates us. Powerful symbols of New Mexico. The childhood heroes I shared with my cattle ranching grandfather. Outlaw warriors, landscapes, and animals. I do not paint for happiness and I no longer believe in that word. I now more so paint in belief of something more like “Eudaimonia,” which is a concept from Ancient Greece wherein my daimon and I are acting in harmony.