Beverly Buchanan was born in 1940 in Fuquay, NC. Buchanan is noted for her exploration of Southern vernacular through her art. Buchanan grew up in Orangeburg, SC where her father was dean of the School of Agriculture at South Carolina State College, which was then the only state school for African-Americans in SC. In 1962, Buchanan graduated from Bennett College in Greensboro, NC with a degree in medical technology. She attended Columbia University where she received a MA in Parasitology in 1968 and a MA in Public Health in 1969. In 1971, she enrolled in a class taught by Norman Lewis at the Art Student’s League in New York City, there Romare Bearden became her friend and mentor throughout the 1970s. Buchanan decided to pursue her art exclusively in 1977 and moved to Macon, GA. In 1980, Buchanan was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (NEA). In 1990 she received another NEA Fellowship in sculpture. She was chosen as a Georgia Visual Arts honoree in 1997. In 2002, she received an Anonymous Was a Woman Award. In 2005, she was a distinguished honoree of the College Art Association Committee for Women in the Arts. Buchanan was also featured as one of twenty-seven artists in the recent Georgia Council for the Arts publication: “Georgia Masterpieces: Selected Works from Georgia Museums” and the MOCA GA exhibition it inspired, Twenty Georgia Masters.