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BETSY BENNETT: A consummate professional, confident, poised, determined to convey the beauty she sees in nature’s simple pleasures.
By Paul Joseph Walkowski
Painting with egg tempera to this artist is a form of poetry, a mystery, something magical that is so emotional that it causes her eyes to well with tears when she tries to explain it to me.
"Chatham Harlequin" © by Betsy Bennett,
egg tempera on panel, 22" x 30"When Betsy Bennett was seven years old, her father gave her a gift of 120 pastel pencils that came “all the way from Germany”. All the way from Germany in 1935 was a world away to a little girl from Pennsylvania. It was an important and expensive gift, her father told her, that was not to be taken for granted. Her father wanted her to understand this, she says, and told her often that he expected her to use them wisely. “My father was really great about pushing me,” she says, fondly recalling her childhood days and the special relationship she had with her dad.
However, Betsy Boss knew she had a talent for drawing long before receiving the pencils, and apparently so did her father. “I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t painting or drawing,” she recalls.For young Betsy, drawing came second nature. “I just had to do it.” As a child she developed a happy talent for drawing figures and portraits and has “vivid memories of painting an ice skater putting on her skates.”
Even though sixty five years have passed since that first boxed set of pencils arrived, she still recalls with affection the faith her father had in her abilities, and the absolutely unyielding belief she possessed, even then, that being an artist was her natural calling. “I knew by the time I was in the seventh grade that I was not going to do anything else.”
The early years:
By the time she reached high school, she recognized something else: that her talent surpassed that of her classmates. “It was obvious to me that in High School I was better than most of the kids in art class. Because I had some sense of my talent then, it gave me the courage to apply for my grant later.” She doesn’t say this in a superior manner or patronizingly, but rather, to explain simply that by the time she arrived at high school she was years into a process many others were either just learning, or whose interest in art may have been fleeting. Not so, with her.
Again, it was her dad who recognized the gift that was quickly developing in his daughter. He enrolled her in the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts classes Saturday mornings, she says, supplementing both her regular art classes and her after-school portrait classes at the Wayne Pennsylvania Art Association.
Although only eleven or twelve, her trips from their home in the suburbs to the Museum on Saturday mornings, taking two trains and a bus to attend class, coupled with her after school classes didn’t burden her. She accepted it gladly. She wanted it and seemed to absorb knowledge with the same ease and eagerness with which she accepted her fate. She was going to be an artist no matter what.
Though an admittedly shy teenager while attending high school she was nonetheless elected president of the art club. More importantly, her considerable talent was evident not just to her classmates, but to her teachers, as well, and as often happens when mentoring occurs, she was taken under the wing of two instructors in particular who were as certain as she of her aptitude for art, and equally determined that her gift not wither.
"Sticks and Stones" © by Betsy Bennett,
oil on panel, 24" x 30"“My teachers helped me put together a portfolio of my work. They made me so excited.” Betsy applied for a scholarship to the Moore College of Art. The scholarship, awarded by the Delaware County Federation of Women’s Clubs, was more than a mere helping hand, it was the full boat: tuition, art supplies, transportation, all expenses, and for four years. Naturally, she got it.
An artist emerges:
Moore College fit Bennett like a glove. Many of its instructors, such as Reginald Marsh and Frank Reilly, she said, came from the Art Students League in New York, and each had something different and special to offer a young person eager to learn.
It was Marsh who introduced her to egg tempera, a medium she adapted to quickly. “Right away I got into it,” she says, reflecting the excitement she felt when she started. “I loved watercolor and still do, but with egg tempera I feel I can build layers in such a way that I can create a kind of poetry.” As she explains the process of painting, her eyes mist over. “I can’t explain it, but it’s like a mystery, something magical begins to happen with egg tempera that I can’t get with any other medium. It takes me somewhere, I really can’t explain.”
Bennett says that while she paints she gets inspiration to create, and one act feeds the other. Even when she works from photographs that she takes herself - she never paints from another’s image -- she takes additional liberties with the scene to create a work that pleases her and captures a mood that is both accurate and unique to her vision. “I start with the photograph and next thing you know I’m painting from my head a place I saw ten years ago.” Like she said, painting is mystical and magic.
"Two Family Duplex" © by Betsy Bennett,
egg tempera on panel, 18" x 24"Between the years 1952 and 1975 Bennett became an accomplished artist and teacher. She got married, divorced, and struggled through what she calls “not so wonderful years” to raise three children as a single mom. To survive, she substituted as an art instructor at the elementary and high school levels. In addition, she conducted classes for the Chatham, Harwich and Dennis-Yarmouth Adult Education programs. As if this were not enough, she gave private classes and also found the time to teach art at both the Cape Cod Art Association and at Nauset Painters in Orleans. A 1971 workshop in the technique of using egg tempera with Robert Vickery had a significant impression on her methodology. Until that workshop, she says, she was locked into the pre-Renaissance method of egg tempera painting. It was satisfying, but she found the style exacting and rigid. Vickery “taught me how to loosen up.” The loosening process obviously worked. During this period, with everything else going on in her life, she garnered three “First Place” Awards from the Cape Cod Art Association, 1973, 1975 & 1976.
A change in venue:
In 1976, her children now older, Bennett decided that what she needed was a change. She moved to Oregon, where she taught, exhibited, and was prolific enough to be honored with several one-woman shows. There was another benefit she accrued from her move to Oregon; the change of scenery seemed to reinvigorate her. “When I moved to Oregon, I really started to get into it,” she says. She earned a living selling her art, teaching adult education classes and providing private lessons, and, of course, painting. In 1977 she won First Place in the Coos Arts Museum, November Annual. Oregon inspired her, she said. “I was blown away by the spectacle of the Oregon coast,” she says. “It had a severe beauty to it. It’s like, catch your breadth. It’s scary, spectacular. There’s something about those high cliffs that come straight down to the water’s edge.”
While in Oregon, Bennett’s work was also noticed by the Oregon Arts Commission, and after a brief meeting with its members she was awarded a grant to paint portraits of pioneers of the coast - women who had lived by the cliffs since the 1900s. “I painted three large montage portraits in egg tempera, showing them [the women] as they were in 1978 and in the early 1900s.” The portraits, surrounded by small vignettes, tell the stories of the lives of the women, as well as the lives of early settlers to the region. Her work, today, hangs in the Port Orford Library.
Bennett might still be in Oregon were it not for a visit from her son and one of his friends, the son of an interesting man who taught Theatre Lighting at Boston University and whom she had met while in Massachusetts.
“I met my second husband, Sid, socially,” she says, while living in Massachusetts. “We had met in the late 60s on the Cape during our previous lives as couples. I was divorced in 1970; Sid was divorced in ’73. He asked me out, and I said no.” And that was it, or so she thought, until one day her son visited in Oregon and brought along Sid’s son, Peter. “I asked him how his father was doing and we talked. I thought of Sid and wondered what would have happened if I had agreed to date before I left for Oregon.” Soon thereafter, she began writing him, and recounts with a degree of playful amusement, “that was the beginning of it.”
"Mixed Blessing" © by Betsy Bennett,
egg tempera on panel, 18" x 24"It may have been serendipitous, but the arrival of her first grandson came at about the same time her long distance relationship with Sid seemed to be calling for something more than letters. Oregon’s loss was New England’s and Sid’s gain. She moved back to Massachusetts and eventually married him.
Back home again, she concentrated on working in watercolor and exhibiting at the Copley Society in Boston where she earned the title of Copley Master, Bennett decided to give up all other endeavors and concentrate on her art. Her focus and talent earned her a feature article and front cover exposure in the June 1990 edition of American Artist magazine. By 1993 she became ensconced on the Cape. It was also during this period that Julian Baird of Trees Place in Orleans took an interest in her work. “While I was exhibiting at Copley I received a call from Julian. He said, ‘Let’s do lunch.’ and I accepted.”
Baird encouraged her to concentrate on egg tempera and show her work at his gallery in Orleans. She took his advice, and she shows her work exclusively there now.
Betsy Bennett today:
Betsy Bennett today is self-assured and at the top of her form. She is a multiple award winning artist who foregoes the effort to show her work at different galleries, something she says would be impossible, anyway, since she believes her work would suffer if she spread herself to thin. “I don’t think I could paint enough to keep other galleries supplied with new work,” she says, adding, “I try to work on no more than one painting at a time. If I have a commission I may do two.” She completes about two paintings a month, 24 works per season.
nature in egg tempera. “I love to paint trees, especially” she says. “They’re my favorite subjects. They tell a story”, a story she tells through both her art and the titles she gives each painting. “To me,” she says, “they have personality.” A glance at her colorful “A Peony Bush Here in My Garden”, “Color Me Spring”, “Fresh Cut Flowers and “Menu for Migrating” say it all. They’re all Cape Cod scenes, done in egg tempera, magical and mystical, alive and expressive of the beauty the artist sees in the world around her.
"A Peony Bush Here in My Garden"
© by Betsy Bennett, egg tempera on panel, 16" x 24"Bennett paints form her home in Harwich. Her studio is situated in a large cozily finished, attached, oversized garage, complete with couch and chairs, large prominent windows to provide ample natural light, and enough open space to display her work, store supplies and paint. It is a warm and inviting environment right off the kitchen that allows the visitor to experience the world in which this consummate and gifted artist lives and works. For the time being, at least, she has put aside all other mediums, and all other subject matter, and has concentrated on painting what she loves most:
Settled, where she most wants to be:
While her personal life may have had its ups and downs, it is hard to imagine someone with her drive ever struggling to achieve success, or suffering disappointment along the way in her career as an artist. Indeed, as she recounts her life and career one senses that her ambition and overpowering drive to be an artist, coupled with a natural talent that was encouraged and nurtured by her father, allowed no time to think of her mission as work, her dreams as a burden, or her efforts as a struggle. Like the egg tempera that moves her to tears, her life has been layered, either by choice or happy coincidence, and her course set. She achieved success one step at a time, one accomplishment after another, until she reached her dream. She sums it up best: “I have achieved my dream. It was a long, long road to get where I am, lots of ups and downs. But I can say I have three children that I adore, and a man I cherish and respect, and finally some success with my painting.”
Bennett has found a medium that allows her to express what she terms “the poetry in my soul. I am most where I want to be,” she says, “a place where there are always hidden treasures to explore and paint. If I live to be 100 I could never begin to say what I feel about this peninsula, but I’m thankful to be able to keep trying.”
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