Frank Beanland was born in 1936 in Bridlington. He attended Hull College of Art from 1952 to 1957 and the Slade School of Fine Art, London, from 1959 to 1961 under Claude Rogers. Beanland won a scholarship to continue his studies in Stockholm before returning to live in Cornwall. In 1962, following success at the Young Contemporaries show, Beanland was invited by a fellow Slade student to join a number of other artists in Porthleven and paint by the harbour.

They exhibited under the banner of the ‘Porthleven Group’. It was during this formative period in Porthleven that Beanland became an abstract painter. As a result, Beanland achieved his first two one-man shows in 1963 and 1965, both held at the Drian Gallery, London. 
In 1964 he took up a teaching post at Swansea College of Art. It was at this time that Beanland swapped his palette knife for a brush and his ‘spot paintings’ began to emerge. When they were first shown at the Grabowski Gallery in 1967, these proved popular. 

Beanland currently lives and works in East Anglia and his more recent paintings are purely abstract, often in acrylic on newspaper.