Betty was nurtured in a family of limited means and six children. Her mother was strong, intelligent, compassionate, and while devoting her own creativity to raising her large family, she sparked an artistic nature in her six-year-old daughter one morning by drawing an amazingly lifelike picture of a horse. Betty perfected her own images of horses for years, in affordable pencil and charcoal, working on brown paper bags if she had to. She is self-taught in art, her formal studies followed a more practical, and rigorous, focus on science and math, with creativity expressed in music studies, breaking ground as the first female conductor of her school’s concert band. Betty is a former biomedical research professional.
During her long marriage, she produced no art at all, except the occasional Christmas cards. In addition to her own career, she assisted her husband in his shop where he worked after hours to produce lab equipment for immunology research. The very day she retired, she turned back to art.
Art “saved me from grief,” she says, referring to the untimely death of her partner. Rescue pets and landscaping rounded out her new lifestyle, difficult at times, but rewarding in her artistic community of compassionate, hard-working people. “It is my hope that some of passion shows in my paintings, conveying Light and Hope.”
