Beckley's work of the past five or six years looks as new as the new millennium, and yet for years he has exchanged the ruled line of the minimalists for the less predictable linearity of stems and branches.

After painting trees in the late 1960s and early '70s, he pictured twigs and stems in photo pieces of a few years later.

In the 1980s, he mimicked blades of grass with lengths of green aluminum pipe.

Over the decades, metaphors evolved, allusions ramified.

Because there is never one true meaning to be extracted from a work of art, it remains endlessly open to interpretation.

Inviting and eluding the attempt to make sense of it, the work brings one, eventually, to a sense of oneself.

Exerpt from Pathways to a self, introduction by Carter Ratcliff

Interview: Bill Beckley talking about his work from 1969-71