Beasley became a full time artist in 2001. He was then 36 years old, and had become bored with his career in marketing.
Although he found his vocation relatively late in life, John began painting seriously in childhood and sold his first work while still a schoolboy. He went on to attend art school, but found the atmosphere stifling and dropped out after six months.
He spent a number of his formative years in Africa, and his early portraits clearly reflect his interest in native art - and especially in native face masks. The pieces that he creates today still owe something to Africa, although European and American influences are now more obvious. In a 2003 feature about leading portraitists, the Financial Times described Beazer's work as: “…pop art meets Max Beckmann.”
Beasley may have been influenced by other artists and schools, but his style is unique and highly distinctive. His deployment of colour is bold, arresting and sometimes counterintuitive, and his use of black lines to enclose blocks of colour is a signature characteristic of his style.
When he began painting John specialised almost exclusively in portraits. However, his focus has shifted decisively to the abstract, and he now only rarely produces work that does not feature what he calls his 'boxes to the soul'. Portraits still feature heavily in his portfolio which is partly in response to a wave of commissions. However, it also reflects the great creative and technical satisfaction that he finds in rendering excellent likenesses of his sitters and in capturing the essences of their personalities. The constraints of his unusual style make these processes both more challenging and more rewarding.
Beasley says: “My greatest professional pleasure is hearing feedback from my sitters. When they tell me about the reactions of their families and friends to my work, I get an amazing high. People respond differently to portraiture than to other forms of art. When those who know the subject well see a painting, they engage with it less analytically but on more levels. And when they look beyond the likeness and discover the very soul of their friend deep within the canvas, both they and the sitter can find the experience extremely moving. Portraiture alone allows me to touch people in that way.”
Over the last fifteen years, Beazer has built up a considerable body of work, nearly all of which was commissioned as a result either of personal recommendations, or of his paintings being seen in public or private spaces.