Local painter jennifer Beckett has dabbled in a variety of subjects, but lately her series of faceless musicians has stolen the show.

Each one of these bold, deep works features an abstraction of a member of a jazz band or couple dancing, strikingly cast against a rich blue background.

The people, however, are all missing one crucial feature?their faces. “Steal your face right off your head,” as the Grateful Dead would say.

The missing faces are somewhat ironic considering the artist has emphasized painting faces in the past.

“I’m really a face person. A lot of my earlier work was of faces,” she said. “I see faces everywhere, in the clouds, in the carpet.”

Beckett chose to create the musicians without faces for their universal appeal.

“I didn’t want them to be black or white, male or female,” she said.

The players could be of any age and era, thus causing the viewer to stop and get lost in the paintings for a moment and contemplate exactly who is performing and dancing.

Similarly, Beckett gets lost in the music as she paints.

“I just turn on the music and let it happen,” she said. “I’m usually listening to Dan Fogelberg when I’m painting,” she adds.

A cycle of sketches precedes each painting, “sometimes one, sometimes 20,” the artist said.

She actually created drawings before she painted seriously, but luckily to those who enjoy her colorful works, she moved on to the rich diversity of the painter’s palette.

“I used to draw rather than paint. I was afraid (to try painting),” she said.

One source of encouragement to her was Will Duncan of the Art House.

“For as talented as she was, she was very shy about showing her work,” Duncan said.

Apparently, Beckett had nothing to worry about.

“Within the first three weeks I carried Jennifer’s work I sold nine paintings,” Duncan said. “She’s still the top-selling artist in the gallery.”

Beckett admits the success came with a lot of hard work and experimenting with different styles.

“It took me a while to develop techniques,” she said.

One of her developments was a way to make bold colors have an even more striking effect: paint a layer of one color and then slathering on its complimentary (opposite on the color wheel) color on top. For example, the musicians’ red shirts contain a layer of green below, barely visible between thick strokes of the red, but still showing through enough to have an effect.

“That’s what makes the red pop so much, its opposite underneath,” Beckett said.

Likewise, the blue backgrounds are supported by a “tomato-y” color.

Another technique she has mastered is the faux finish. Another series of paintings named after months stands in stark contrast to the musicians. These works, containing geometric squares and lines, colors blend together to create an effect of marble.

Beckett learned this and other finishing techniques by attending workshops in Atlanta.

“That’s the one thing I really learned, everything else I was pretty much self-taught,” she said.

She now has more time to focus on her passions: painting and her two daughters, one 16, the other 18 months.

“I recently quit my job so I could stay home with my kids and paint more,” she said.

The former newspaper photographer and illustrator finds she must continue painting.

“It’s a release, it’s something I have to do,” Beckett said. “My family tells me when I’m in a bad mood, ?You should go paint something.’”

While some say they complete a work in a matter of days or weeks, Beckett said each one of her paintings takes her entire life up to the point of its creation.

“The next painting I will produce will have taken me 33 years. I couldn’t have painted it without that lifetime of experience and practice.”