“New Beginnings”, acrylic on canvas

Betty Leigh

51 Chestnut Street, Rhinebeck 12572 | 917-280-2621 | Handicap Accessible | Open Labor Day Monday
[email protected] | bettyleighart.com

Artist Statement

My paintings are songs.  The colors are instruments making notes…together there is a complete artistic entity…If you look at my paintings and imagine sound…you can see music.

For so many years,  Music has been an important part of my life, all kinds of music…Bluegrass, Americana (think John Prine), Jazz, Chants, Max Richter, anything by Daniel Lanois, Olafur Arnalds from Iceland….  Music transforms day or night…we feel differently…depending on the music…sad, lighter, freer, alive….Color is so strong and tells you what that painting is all about.

And, if you look quietly enough, who is the painter.  Nothing hidden…each color playing its part (singing it’s song if you will)…  Color reaches out and grabs you by the heart and soul.  You have memories of colors…colors relate to one another.  they have their preferences..  You can look at a painting and just know which color refuses to blend with another color.  and then sometimes the colors you would least expect to blend fool you.

There are some colors that I have loved my whole life.   The magenta in my paintings remind me of the sofa in my mother’s house.  It has ALWAYS been my favorite.  When I went to Nepal the monks were all wearing MY color, yes, the color of my mother’s sofa in Pittsburgh.

I loved Nepal and always wanted to go…when I saw the color of the monks robes I knew I was home…I know that color drew me to Nepal.

I know you have colors which have “colored” your life…Memories of where, when and what color….

I love painting.  I love mixing colors and delighting in how one color affects the other.  The discovery that Magenta blends with Red and then amazingly enough Orange…what a realization …My paintings are for you to enjoy, appreciate and let the colors and their relationship to one another transform you… and perhaps get to know me. I have painted all of my life, through each phase, the paintings changed…but not the passion or power. I studied  Painting and Photography in California at Cal Arts… (California Institute of The Arts) and NYU here in New York.