Played as patrons leave a movie or theatrical performance, exit music helps usher our senses from the imaginary world back to the mundane. Beard employs Exit Music as a metaphor for transition through liminal space. Meditating upon the connective patterns underlying events at vastly different scales, he seeks a deeper understanding of the intricate relationships between matter, space, energy and time. Of special interest to Beard are the quandary of ultimate origin, the paradox of the inwardly infinite, and the profound effects of fallible memory upon the transmission of history, shaping of culture, and dynamics of personal relationships. Beard’s richly-layered Exit Music paintings combine playful Abstract Expressionism with fields of color that transition slowly through color and temperature. He slices blue painter’s tape, strip- by-strip, and methodically applies it to create cyclic patterns that enhance the dimension and movement of roughly-hewn serpentine forms floating in an expressionistic soup. Beard often chooses colors for their metaphorical possibilities, and the dance between chaos and order helps him meditate upon the weaving of human will with natural forces as a creative activity that sculpts Space-Time to our adaptive needs and desires.