In the catalogue for the exhibit Pricked: Extreme Embroidery, David Revere McFadden, chief curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, writes that “Stephen Beal explores color as a repository of memory, and how colors elicit specific emotional states. Subtleties of shade, hue, and saturation give each color its own personality and subjective meaning.”

For himself, Beal says, “You give me color and I am one happy fellow.” When he was a toddler and his mother took him to visit his grandmother, the women kept him quiet by spilling on the floor spools of thread from the sewing cabinet. The women chatted; the boy made structures of color.

Nothing’s changed. Beal draws each canvas freehand and a few days later—drawings should sit a while, he feels,

like soup—he translates the drawing to graph paper. All this time he’s been thinking of color, anticipating color, getting anxious to take out the floss and start to bring the canvas to life. He never puts color on the graph paper; he mulls color over till he gets the thread in his hands.

In his portfolio, you’ll find canvases about van Gogh, Rembrandt, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Abe Lincoln. Canvases about places he has been and scenes he has imagined. Light-hearted canvases, ironic and surreal canvases. If you think it can’t be done, he may have tried it: see Dancing Popes in the Dramatic Scenes section.

This fiber artist is long past the toddler stage but, as far as he’s concerned, he’s still at Grandmother’s house getting kicks from colored thread.