“To create a new viewing experience from different angles, I’m accustomed to using a mirror. I look at my subjects (such as butterflies) in the mirror, because you can see them backwards and you can see your composition and say ‘Oh, this needs to be darker,’ or ‘Oh, this needs to be bigger.’ The best compliment I have received is that my paintings look unusual. To me, that means I was able to take an ordinary subject and look at it in an entirely new light. My paintings should look like me, so I love it when people say that. Or when they flip through a book and say, ‘Oh I saw your painting.’ It’s recognizable. I’m painting in my mind, even if I’m not at the easel. If you want to paint, you have to paint.”
Quotes have been edited for clarity and brevity.
|
|
|
About the artist
Art is more than the combination of colors on canvas; it’s a personal culmination of an entire lifetime of emotions and experiences. That is the philosophy 86-year-old painter Judi Betts reflects on as she continues to paint in her home tucked away in a wooded corner of Baton Rouge. In a studio covered wall-to-wall in her paintings, subjects ranging from wicker chairs and cowboys to coastal Floridian homes, Betts remembers the exact meaning and purpose behind most every piece of art she has painted, explaining that she has anywhere from two to 10 paintings in various stages of completion at any time.
Painting in watercolor since she moved to Louisiana from Chicago in 1959, Betts has had her artwork showcased across the world, including at the Taiwan Art Education Institute, the Federation of Canadian Artists and Walt Disney World’s EPCOT.
Her art has also graced mediums ranging from national television, DVDs, over 35 books and even wine labels, which she won five awards for. Named by the Transparent Watercolor Society of America a Master of Watercolor, she has also served as a judge for more than 150 national and regional competitions.
Her art, for which she has received the Louisiana Governor’s Award for Professional Artist (the state’s highest artistic honor), has been showcased in the rotunda of the Louisiana’s Governor’s Mansion, as well as California’s Oceanside Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Even now, after six decades of painting and teaching art, Betts is as vibrant and full of enthusiasm as ever about art and its importance to society. It’s why she continues to teach even into her late 80s.
|
|
|
When she began teaching art over 60 years ago at East Ascension High School, she was the first art teacher hired in the parish. Six decades later, she has taught more than 425 workshops across the world, including in Norway, Italy, the Czech Republic and every U.S. state, with the exception of South Dakota and Delaware. She retired from her full-time job in 1985, but she continues to work with students in workshops, where she guides them in experimentation and finding their own style.
“I want them to have fun like how I have fun,” Betts says. “I want them to invent. … I try to steer them to not choose something that difficult.”
This article was originally published in the October 2022 issue of 225 magazine.