66 maconmagazine.com | October/November 2026
F
or eight years, from 1977 to 1985, Beverly
Buchanan lived and worked in Macon,
marking a transition in her life's direction
and as an artist.
It was also the beginning of the lasting impact she
has had on Maconites and Macon's art world.
Born in North Carolina in 1940 and raised in South
Carolina, Buchanan's parents were both educators.
Buchanan earned a degree in medical technology
and advanced degrees in parasitology and public
health. These led her to New York and New Jersey,
where she served as both a medical technician and
health educator, with aspirations of becoming a
doctor.
With the publication of a book about her art, honors abounding,
and exhibits growing internationally, the late artist Beverly
Buchanan's popularity is at an all-time peak — but it hasn't peaked.
still reigns
B E V E R LY
B U C H A N A N
STORY BY MICHAEL W. PANNELL
But something happened.
During those years, Buchanan began drawing
as a hobby. Being a lifelong learner, art classes
were inevitable. Naturally, she gravitated toward
good ones, eventually studying at the Art Students
League under pioneering African American abstract
expressionist Norman Lewis and being mentored by
Romare Bearden, a signifi cant 20th-century painter,
collagist, and printmaker.
They brought an emphasis on intuition,
atmospheric color, lyric abstraction, social
consciousness, and Black memory.
Buchanan decided she wanted art to become her
life's focus. She dropped healthcare and famously
