She started at sixty
In 2020, Beverly was running a day care centre. Then the schools closed, and by the end of that year the centre had gone, and with it everything she had planned for the years ahead. She was about to turn sixty, and she was not ready to stop.
She spent the back half of that year homeschooling a few of the children in her front room in the mornings, and her afternoons online, hunting down lessons to send home to their parents. Somewhere in all that searching, she came across dot art, and this was the start of something new...
Her daughter bought her the first set of tools, along with some acrylic paint, which Bev still has to this day. She began to practise on whatever was in the house: paper, cardboard, mugs, cups, plates. She taught herself from videos of other artists sharing what they knew.
"I jumped in and I loved every moment of it and I just couldn't believe that I could do something like this, you know, I was 60 years old."
The tale of two canvases
Bev tells a story about two of her most meaningful pieces of work. They began as two canvases on her bedroom wall that the sun had gotten to. It came in at just the wrong angle, day after day, until the design on them had bleached away to almost nothing, and they ended up going into storage.
In 2020 she pulled them back out, looked up how to prepare a canvas, and painted them again. One is a mandala, and the other is a peacock.
Both of these artworks are still on her wall today. Her daughter once suggested she go back and straighten a few things out now that she's honed her craft, but her response was simply:
"It is going to stay lopsided, because that is my start."
She walks past these pieces every day. They are a record of where she was standing when she began, and they carry with them the reminder of how far she's come, how much she has grown.
"And whenever I'm feeling a bit low or something has happened, I turn around and I look at these pieces and it's a real encouragement."
Where the work comes from
Bev was first introduced to the artistic world by one of her older brothers.
"My older brother was very arty. I can remember when we were children, on a Sunday afternoon in winter, we'd sit in the car in the sun and just sort of sit there, listen to the radio, play music... we didn't have all the technology the children have today. He would sit in the back seat while I was fiddling in the front seat, always wanting to drive my dad's car. He was sketching me and I didn't know that, but eventually he said to me: 'this is what I've been drawing'. He had sketched my profile, and I was like, 'you can draw?!' And then over the years, I watched him hone this amazing talent and I was like, I wish I had that talent. I've always wanted to do pottery and those kinds of things, but I never really thought that I could actually take a pencil and paper and sketch something until I discovered dot art and one or two commission pieces required me to actually draw a cat or something. I also found that when I was teaching children and helping them with drawings and that kind of thing, I discovered that I really enjoyed crafts. So, yeah, so that's where it all started, really late in my life, I must admit."
Bev likes to read up on where dot art came from, and stay informed about the cultural and historical meaning behind the mandala traditions it sits alongside. She follows artists working in the dot art space on Instagram and Pinterest, which is where she gets a lot of her inspiration. She will see a design she loves and decide she is going to try to make it, but she has never managed to copy another work identically, and always finds that once she begins, the work takes on a life of its own.
"I start with a single dot. And then it goes from there."
She will look at the finished piece and find something that has almost nothing to do with the picture she set out to copy, and that, she says, is the part she likes the most. She has tried to make a set of four matching coasters more than once, but finds that she just cannot do it.
"It doesn't interest me. I think I get bored very easily with the same pattern and the same design."
Which means every piece that leaves her desk is the only one of its kind.
Where the work is going
When asked about her goals for the future, and her ultimate artistic dream, Bev expressed her desire to have her distinct artistic voice to be recognised when looking at her work.
"You know sometimes when you're going through Instagram or Facebook, and you don't actually see the artist's name, but you see a design and you know exactly who the artist is. I want, one day, for somebody to see my design and say, 'oh, that's Bev's Gone Dottie.' I keep saying to myself, I need to find my own voice. When people scroll, they must just know that's me."
When we told her that is already how her work reads to us, she went quiet for a second, and then repeatedly let us know how much that meant to her.
One of Bev's biggest aspirations at the moment is to do a massive commission piece for somebody.
"For me, there's always going to be coasters, there's always going to be those kinds of things, but I'd like to work on something really unusual and special. I don't know what that is yet, but it's something that I would like to do."
In terms of what she has in store for her work, this is going to be her second year having a stand at the Stanford Chelsea Flower show, taking place from the 12th-27th of September 2026. This is something she's very excited about, and is particularly meaningful to her because of her daughter's work in environmental conservation.
The space and the tools
Bev had 3 words to say about the state of her workspace:
"Total mess. Chaos."
She informed us that, while she tidies her desk about once a week, it is gone again within five minutes of creating. However, there are two important tools she makes sure to always keep at arm's reach. The first is a scalpel she rescued from a dissecting kit her daughter had at school, which she uses for opening, lifting, decanting paint from a big pot into a small one, and a dozen other things. The second is her thinnest dowel, for mixing. These are the things she says she cannot work without.
Alongside those, Bev keeps a bottle of water, her phone, and a phone stand. She listens rather than watching her screen while she paints, as her eyes have to stay focused on where the dot is going. Christian music, podcasts, and reels that she swipes on with one hand without looking up are all in her go-to mix of media.
The importance of perspective and the centre of a circle
We asked Bev what her favourite part of the creation process is, and her answer was incredibly insightful. To her, the best part is being able to return to her workstation the morning after finishing a piece and look at it with fresh eyes.
"Sometimes I look at whatever it is I'm working on, and think, 'it's not quite working for me.' But eventually, when I come back the next day I'm like, wow, I created that. And, you know, I fall in love with my piece. So I think that's the best part and the most rewarding part of doing this is to come back the next day and look at it and think, wow, it is amazing."
She gets to experience this feeling whenever her friends order from her as well. They still ask, every time, whether she really made it herself. They're always in complete disbelief, she says, and she has never quite gotten used to it.
On the flip side, the hardest part of the whole craft, the thing that undoes her before a single dot is laid down?
Finding the centre of a circle.
She has tried templates. Tape measures. Rulers. Drawing the circle on paper first and transferring it across. She says it drives her nutty every time.
The biggest lesson she's learnt and her advice for other business owners
She had this to say about what she's learnt and how she would want to encourage others:
"I think for me, the biggest lesson I've learnt is to never give up."
Bev admitted that she's thought of giving up before.
"I've thought of it. I've thought it because, and this is quite personal I suppose, because I've really struggled financially since the closing of my business, I had to let everything go. I mean, literally everything that I had planned for my future. So I found myself quite destitute, and it was very hard."
But ultimately, she believes in the value of perseverance and has been able to see her hard work pay off.
"Since starting this little business... I mean, it's very seasonal, but it has held. It has held things together. I don't know. I can't find the words to explain. But I don't think I should ever give up on it until I can't anymore, because it has closed many holes."
So, the advice she's most like to give over to others, especially those just starting out, is to hang in there when things get tough.
"If it's something that you're really passionate about and that you enjoy and you believe in, then you should never give up just because there are some stumbling blocks. I think in everything we'll find stumbling blocks, but it's about hanging in there and continuing to do what you do."
The feeling that lingers
Bev puts so much into her work, and wants her customers to feel as though they are taking a part of her with them when they receive one of her pieces.
"I know that it could just be a thing to somebody, it's something materialistic, but for me it's more than that. I feel like it's a part of me."
As she explained before, whatever Bev creates is an original. So, even though when somebody orders from her, it's something that they wanted, she has put a piece of herself into the item(s), and just hopes that her customers are able to enjoy the piece and understand what has gone into creating it.
Rapid Fire Questions
- Favourite TV show? I love crime and detective shows. But for me at the moment, my favourite shows have been Korean K-Dramas.
- Book rec? I don't really read novels anymore, but my go-to reading material is my Devotionals.
- Your waiter brings you the wrong order. Are you returning it? I would normally leave it, but my husband told me I shouldn't do that anymore. So I'd just try and do it as gently as possible.
- Early bird or night owl? When I was working at the day-care I was at work at around 5:30/6 o'clock in the morning, but I'm definitely more of a night owl these days, especially if I'm watching series.
