© Time Inc.ĭuring one tour, the couple decided to camp between shows for a week at the Furnace Creek campground in Death Valley National Monument. | Photo: Vernon Merritt for Life Magazine. Marta Becket and her husband Tom Williams photographed at Death Valley Junction for LIFE Magazine. During these years, Becket began to see, experience and grow to appreciate the Western landscape, which differed vastly from what she had known growing up in New York City. Still, Becket continued to paint and sell her canvasses between performance tours.Īfter marrying her manager Tom Williams in 1962, the two embarked on a series of one-person show tours of the Western United States.
A critic of the day commented in Art News rather presciently: "In the midst of crowds and glitter, her figures seem isolated and withdrawn - living in private existences in closed worlds while displaying their bodies publicly." Convinced that she would receive her "big break" when her one-woman show opened at NYC's Waverly Gallery on November 23, 1963, her hopes were dashed when the sad news of President Kennedy's assassination spread around the world the very same day.
While touring the regional circuit in the early 1960s performing with her own repertoire, Becket also managed to secure an art gallery in NYC where she began to sell her figurative paintings of whimsical New York City street scenes - city parks, costume shops, circuses populated with a variety of theatrical and stylized children, shop keepers, carnies and even "bored" fortune tellers. "The Kite Flyer," one of Marta Becket's earlier paintings recently sold on auction.
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