 Bette
Ridgeway
Watercolor Painting / Water Media
“One must transcend technique
so that the art reveals itself on the canvas. As soon as we reflect, deliberate
or conceptualize, the original unconsciousness is lost and a thought interferes...Great
works are created when we are able to release the child within us...the
child unemcumbered the self.” - Bette Ridgeway
Trained as a watercolorist, Bette Ridgeway began her love affair with water media in the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York, where she grew up. She has traveled the globe; painting, teaching, exhibitting her work...while embracing the colors and customs of very diverse cultures in Africa, Australia, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
Her formal education at Russell Sage College, New York School of Interior Design and the Art Students League gave her basic training in the use of materials and techniques. Her personal style was a long time in development.
Bette Ridgeway's signature is color. In her transparent, multi-layered paintings,
she builds armatures out of wood. In this way she is agble to control the shapes
and directions of each flow. The process is physically laborous and each painting
takes many weeks to complete. It might take two hours to construct the armature
for a single flow of paint. Sometimes the paint is allowed to dry between layering
and sometimes the colors are flowed together. "The movement that occurs
is so beautiful. I really get into the process. It is like entering into another
world — a world of mind, of space... of something beyond.
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Creative Catalyst Productions Inc.
