secret gardens

This Saturday we celebrate the Secret Gardens of Lake Forest Park!  I will be privileged to paint in the garden of Betsy and George Piano.

Meanwhile, throughout June please visit the Sunlight Cafe and consider giving a home to one of my primitavist knifepaintings of Northwest human habitat -- pruning helps us thrive, in art as in gardening!
view my website

sharing the wealth

Swinomish, ©2012 BVF Betker, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches

Hope all local friends will come down to take a look at my June show, Stolen Beauty, at the Sunlight Cafe, 6403 Roosevelt N.E. in Seattle!  My friend Brian Forrest's gorgeous paintings are up until then.  If you have missed them he and I will present a duo show there in September!

Please join me for happy hour Thursday, June 14, 4 - 6 pm and enjoy some of the Sunlight's scrumptious treats!

And don't forget the Quarterly First Friday Open Studio, June 1, 2012, 8 - 10pm at Gasworks Studios, 3515 4th Avenue N.E. (Across the street from Ivar’s Salmon House).
Explore three floors of studios including my new space in the underground's east end!

website:  www.betkerart.com  

email:  halfsweet@comcast.net   

splash in the pan

Beauty Alley II, ©2012 BVF Betker, oil on canvas, 24" x 36"

It has been pointed out to me I haven't posted in awhile. That's because I've been putting everything new on the website instead of writing about it. I need a staff!

Last November the sun came from behind the clouds and I started painting in earnest and building what might actually be considered a body of work -- rather than the Frankenstein's monster I'd been gathering all these years. Its focus is human territory: the occupied landscape.

Rather than begin at the beginning, here is one of the latest pieces. I paint with a knife, thus avoiding the need for solvents, and adding that element of sculpture with impasto that I love so much!

adding and subtracting

copyright 2011 BVF Betker

This accidental monoprint is just a tonking of a small piece I'm painting on copper sheet. So far I like this better than the painting, but I plan to change that!

portraits of friendship

acrylic on canvas, 10 x 10

acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 (tonked)



watercolor on paper, 20 x 14

My dear friend Teresa has been sitting for me every week. She is a forgiving sort and lets me manipulate and distort her features every which way. At some point I will settle down and get closer to what I actually see of her! But here are a few of the latest efforts.

plein beginnings

untitled, copyright BVF Betker 2011, w/c and ink on resin-infused paper

This began when Leigh took Seattle Plein Air folks to the new footbridge across the creek up in Lake Forest Park several weeks ago. Out there in the trees, I used gouache on black multimedia artboard to create a value study. But pretty soon the rain sent us all running for cover (of course).
Later I added pale watercolor washes for moody stage 2 (immediately above), and then just kept working and adding layers till my desired image emerged (top). I think paint is some kind of magic!

riparian value

A sail glows 2, copyright 2011 BVF Betker, 8 x 10 inches

A sail glows 1, copyright 2011 BVF Betker, 8 x 10 inches

Here are a couple different views of one scene. These are painted from a single (morning!) photo reference taken on a Seattle Plein Air outing to Lake Forest Park -- created in an attempt to study value. One is painted in gouache and watercolor on black multimedia artboard; one on white.

chickens al fresco

Fellow Wallingford artist Nancy Merrill keeps chickens, and her studio's picture window overlooks their quarters. I was privileged one day last year to spend a rainy afternoon with her, snug in her studio, drinking tea and sketching her chickens in ink on canvas. Added final watercolor and an acrylic fixative to the top one just recently!

landscape party

ink and watercolor stick on paper, 13 x 10, copyright 2011

flickr has a new group which shares reference photos for mutual 2D experimentation. Here is my rendition of a photo reference titled Minster Lovell by Martin Beek of the UK.

it's good to be queen

Forever and a day since I posted. have gotten into the studio a little, trying to get out plein air more often too. Here is a sample of what I've managed to get done lately!
Got into a little jazz again. New nature vivant series in progress, it's good to be queen.

floodplain study, 4.5 x 4.5", ink and watercolor on canvas, copyright 2010

Varnished this little watercolor and now it's permanently fixed to the canvas with mineral spirits varnish. Had to gas-mask up for this but it was worth it as I did several pieces at once. This stuff can be used over oil, watercolor, probably pastel although I haven't tried that, still afraid of what it might do. Guess I should test it! Have not used it on paper at all yet.

Vigil

4" x 4", watercolor on canvas, copyright 2010

Visited NYC for September 11 weekend and came away with the same ache of longing I always have for this magnificent city, beating like a heart and like a drum, singing and breathing, at all hours of every day.

that elusive dot card of desire

Daniel Smith has always been generous with samples of its magnificent watercolors, secure in the knowledge that if they can get you to try them for free you will be enslaved forever. For me, a dot card is an excuse to make little ink sketches just so I can paint on them.
NYC's water towers are my favorite part of its skyline. Some of the DS Primatek colors leave an irresistible sediment, organic patina for my purposes!

Even Julia Kay's Portrait Party isn't safe from me.


Rediscovering this joyful medium may be leading me back into the great mystery. I hope!

new old fiber arts

Mustang Kimono with Fish (detail), woven acrylic skins on plexiglas, copyright 2010


This summer I've been reclaiming some notes from my past, sometimes in 3 dimensions, mixing various media as fiber. Here are some parts of the process, combining layering, collage, mosaic and weaving of skins made of acrylic paint that also incorporate painted paper and hand-dyed silk threads.




'

Reweaving II, woven and collaged acrylic skins
with painted paper on stretched gessoed canvas,
36" x 36", copyright 2010

Updrafts, 20" x 20", copyright 2010
collage mosaic on painted canvas comprised on acrylic skins, painted paper, hand-dyed silk

another secret garden

Too busy to blog? I am not going for a record here! But again, unavoidably, it has been forever.

Here is a little painting from last June, when I was invited to paint in the garden of Bill and Merce Rutledge as part of Secret Gardens of Lake Forest Park tour. This is 12 x 12, acrylic on black-gessoed stretched canvas. It was a rather dark day but very pleasant surroundings and company! I am sure I had more fun than anyone else there.

the Georgetown incident

It's been forever since I've posted! I've been painting but working too. Finally Worldwide Sketchcrawl has inspired me to actually upload some photos. Here's my sketch from last Saturday's brilliant day in the sun with folks from Urban Sketchers Seattle, Seattle Plein Air, and Sketch Pistols. So rich to see what everyone does!

rail yard

A few weeks ago I sketched this scene in ink on canvas at Fishermen's terminal. It was freezing but bright! Later painted it in the studio. 4.5" x 4.5"

teresa painting, christmas 2009

This has been a season of peaceful holidays, spent painting! It's been years since I had this freedom.

On Christmas Day my friend of many decades gifted me with her presence and suggested a portrait party. We set a limit of 20 minutes but failed to set a timer, I think it was 30! This sketch is in acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches.

bridge to somewhere

Here are my two newest tiny (4 inches square) paintings. I am tempted to just do these tiny little paintings forever, this is really satisfying! They begin as pen/brush drawings on gessoed canvas in airbrush-consistency acrylic (I call it ink); when that is dry, I add tiny bits of color, transparent and opaque, until they are suddenly done!

These are views of the Aurora bridge west of Gas Works Park here in Seattle.

This one, West From Gas Works II, was originally drawn in white acrylic on black gesso:

West From Gas Works III was sketched in anthraquinone blue acrylic "ink" on white gesso:

farewell

Farewell, acrylic on canvas, 30" x 40", copyright 2009 (title sort of explained below)
Well, it has been a while since I've posted all right. Have been getting outside to paint maybe once a week, working a lot in the studio. Would like to find homes for the accumulation. Fantasy is to find a corporate wormhole that will just vacuum up all my production straight into a venue where it will be loved -- no muss, no fuss, no gallery openings, no schmoozing; no hyperventilating, no angst -- no talk, basically. Aren't I terrible? It is exhausting thinking of all the things that must be done to create a dynamic opportunity for my work to go belong to someone else. I don't like talking people into buying work. Hate it, in fact. Never have done it. Yet there used to be clients in my life, back when I was a "real" painter! Some of them I knew, some of them I was never told their names by the gallerists or reps.
I have heard writer Kazuo Ishiguro quoted as saying people who choose solitary professions do so because they have something from which to heal. Whether the quote is accurate, this certainly applies to a lot of artists I know. We would rather work with our physical media than struggle with the vagaries and potential betrayals of human interaction -- at least a lot of the time! Objects can be our friends -- at least for a while.
Is there any reliable way for someone who hates to socialize to sell their art? If anyone has advice beyond "work your tail off" please share!
***
Recently learned that an iconic piece I thought I had in storage was sold at auction a year ago by a place here in Seattle called Pacific Galleries. They won't tell me who consigned it to them or anything else. Very odd. Back when it was new -- one of the times I had to drop the career and care for family, in 1998 -- I could very well have lost track of this piece. For a while it was on loan to Summit Travel and Cruises. Did someone there hang onto it and finally turn it over to the auction house, or did something else happen? I don't know. I have spent the last terrible decade not painting and believing I never would again, but have never heard from anyone regarding this piece; found this sale by accident on the internet.

Ton Plaisir II (Yellow Trees), pastel on paper, 29.75'' x 43.5'', copyright 1998

Ironically, this piece is one I reproduced for business cards I still carry.

avenging the leopard

Here is a piece that began as an experiment in layers of acrylic paint and mediums, collaging in separately created acrylic skins and painted paper. It developed organically -- a means I enjoy and will have to keep learning from; right now I think it worked well! 36" x 36" acrylic/collage on canvas.
(The leopard in question was my painted silk kimono-style fiber sculpture, stolen from Seattle Center in the early nineties. It walked off its display as I sat 20 feet away, attending to something I guess... I have mourned long enough.)