Portfolio: Paintings
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- Dance of the Furies, 2012
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- Humoresque, 2012
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- Song of the Indian Guest, 2012
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- Raindrop Prelude, 2012
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- Grieg’s Butterfly, 2012
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- Finger Exercise No. 7, 2012
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- Finger Exercise No. 6, 2012
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- Echorus, 2012
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- Melody for Orpheus, 2012
My sensibilities were hatched in the Northwest where dew, mist, and coastal fog hang like mysterious skeins between you and the world. Form is not crisp; it’s blotted. Edges bleed, boundaries blur. Light is silver and refulgent. The aesthetic temperament is mercurial. Urban landscapes are rarified, and nature is sacred.
Now I spend part of the year in my husband’s hometown, Columbus, Georgia. To move locations from the dewy Northwest to the sunny South comes with a welcomed aperture adjustment as I open to the light. My studio here is flooded with natural light. It sits out back in the yard of my husband’s childhood home where we now live in the winters. There’s a quality here I tap into. It’s about the light, the color, the people. Relationship and kindness are valued highest. At first I thought I’d be a fish out of water here. I mean, I’m kind of a feisty feminist and very independent. But I’ve fallen in love with this place that doesn’t care to be rarified, a place that enfolds the Civil War, forgotten industrial landscapes, abandoned mills, ancestral roots, plantations, patriarchy, racial strife, and daddy’s girls, along with a new generation trying to push things forward. The work I do has to do with movement and rhythms found in classical western music as well as the natural world. The music is in me, and I paint about it wherever I am. But the information in Southern light activates my paintings in a way that imbues them with a likened buoyancy, weightlessness, and transparency.
-Betsy Eby
If Betsy Eby ever decides she doesn’t want to be an artist anymore, she’d have a very successful run at being a poet. Her words are as lovely as her paintings. I’m a big fan of both she and her husband, Bo Bartlett.
Thanks for highlighting this artist!
Wonderful new work, Betsy! I can sense the Southern light infusion and glad to have you and Bo as neighbors during the Winter months. Thank you for sharing your work!
absolutely loved coming home to this ! Cheers Betsy –
Betsy, Buffy is right … your words are as beautiful as your work. When you are “plopped” down somewhere you can embrace your new surroundings or just buy your time until you pack your suitcase again. I speak for Southerners everywhere when I say “thank you” for taking the time to really “get” the South and describe it so poetically … you do us all a favor by living here part of the year. Careful, stay too long and you’ll be sneaking some “y’all’s” into your prose! My favorite is Song of the Indian Guest, breathtaking!
Your work, and your words are soft, ethereal, and beautiful. I’ve never been to the Northwest, but I’ve been a guest of the South, and I am delighted by your poetic and incisive description.