Thoughts on Painting:
Both my parents were musicians, and they saw nothing useless or strange in the urge to make things. That means I was a very lucky kid. I loved to draw, paint, and write, and they always encouraged me. My father found my first art teacher, Heidi Elsaesser, and she helped me see how much of drawing was looking.
Later, I studied at YSU, at the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore, and at YSU again. By the time I returned to YSU, I had changed my major to English, and I followed that path to KSU and to a teaching job, which I loved. While I was at YSU, I took Mary Kay D’Isa’s watercolor class, and it was she who showed me how pure, how exciting, and how risky that medium can be. I kept drawing and painting watercolors around the edges of my job, and, since I’ve retired, I’m painting more. I’ve posted some earlier paintings and some recent ones.
The ones I’ve chosen probably aren’t the ones that others may think are my “best.” But who knows what “best” means, anyway? I’m always chasing a spark of life, and these feel alive to me, even if I see their flaws. They are places, people, things I love, and I’m hoping that comes through. Abstraction? I like to look, but I’m never moved to paint without representing something.
What does inspire me are painters from the past—I stare at Claudine Raguet Hirst’s incredible still life watercolors whenever I’m at the Butler—and the painters I’m lucky enough to know. So many members of the MVWS keep bringing beautiful things to our meetings and keep showing their work in local, regional and international shows. I hope to stay part of that group and to keep painting for a long time because it will take a long time to ever get exactly the effect I’m always trying for with paint, water, paper, and brush.
Betsy Ford
