Bio

Beatrix’s latest film “Tim Stead: Magician With Wood” has been screened worldwide and won 5 prizes, including Best UK Woman Director - Feature Documentary on Climate Change 2025 at the My Name Is Climate Film Festival. Beatrix is now re-connecting with her drawing and painting to consolidate her practice through the different media she works with.  With a Support for Ambition award from ArtsD&G she is developing the multi-disciplinary project “Hebridean Dreams”.  

Born in the USA, Beatrix grew up at the base of the Pennines.  Always driven by a passion for creating stories and images, she graduated from the School of Film and Television in Manchester with a Special Commendation then trained in feature film production.  She was deeply influenced by the culture she experienced in Russia, the Nordic countries and India whilst working as a Screenwriter and Producer making cultural and political documentary films with Finnish Director Pekka Lehto over 20 years. 

After recovering from a brain injury in a car accident, Beatrix studied at the Slade School of Fine Art to develop her painting and explore using time-based media in a fine art context.  In parallel, she became a nature-friendly farmer in Cornwall.  Working on the land and with her green woodworker husband in native woods became her major source of inspiration.  She experimented with integrating analogue and digital media, embedding fur, feathers, bone, hides and bark into her artwork.  As a Collaborative Artist she has led creative enquiries on themes of ecology and rural identity.  She’s made work for cultural, community and heritage projects, multimedia installations and exhibitions in Cornwall, Poland and Finland.

Beatrix moved with her family and animals to the Outer Hebrides in 2010. She had her first solo exhibitions on Uist and undertook residencies at Cove Park and in Lapland.  When her husband died and with two young children to raise, she focussed on being a self-shooting documentary Director/Producer and lived through her cameras, filming as she crofted with native animals. She made a series of personal films about Hebridean culture for BBC Alba.  Her 3 x 1 hour series “‘San Fhuil/It’s In The Blood” was shown in international festivals and broadcast across Europe. “Stravaig”, commissioned by Glasgow School of Art and Belfast School of Art, won Best Experimental Film at Athens International Art Film Festival in 2024. This film integrated her poetry, drawing, painting and filming and was a step towards how she is now working.  

Based in south west Scotland, Beatrix is a board member of visual art and craft organisation Upland.  She serves on funding panels, juries, advisory boards and is a Specialist Advisor to the Creative Industries.  She leads masterclasses and workshops and mentors other practitioners. Roaming the hills with her Welsh cobs and dogs fuels her ideas.