Biography from AskART:
| An artist inspired by her New Mexico surroundings and travels in Italy,
India and England, Betsy Bauer creates layered, glazed oil paintings
with symbolism of her varied interests. Included are references
to 19th-century Italian paper antiquities such as fading
music scores, yellowing book pages and personal letters; Indian
miniatures, and changing atmospherics of English landscapes. Of
special fascination to her is the coloration of the Southwest landscape
that she views first hand from her studio, about ten miles south of
Santa Fe. It is in a two-story building with a loft, "offering
an eastern panorama that frames the pinon-covered hills like a painting
lifted straight from nature. In the opposite direction, the view
is of an undulating adobe carpet abruptly curbed by a semicircle of
mountain ranges. On a clear day, Bauer can see all the way to Mt.
Taylor and the Arizona border."(111)
Bauer also does printmaking and from 1995, commercial art for the Santa
Fe Opera Company. Her images are on posters, postcards and
notepaper and include scenes from operas such as Carmen, The Magic Flute and La Traviata.
In the 1970s, early in her career, Bauer was a surrealist whose
expression was juxtapositioning unlikely objects. Her signature
work was the depiction of trees and plants and flowers, often
superimposing one over the other in oil paint followed by glazing on
antique paper. Sometimes she would add writing from historical
texts. Then in the 1980s, she moved from New York to
New Mexico, and amazed by the landscape vistas, she added that subject
matter to her artwork. In 1980, she took her first trip to
Europe, and learned much about art that she had not encountered in art
school.
Since then she has traveled to Italy more than a dozen times, including
a two-year trip with her family of two adopted daughters from Calcutta,
India.
Bauer's post art school background includes early years as a cartoon
animator in New York, and then unable to find that kind of work in New
Mexico, she remained there, first taking a job as a landscaper.
Her artwork is part of the Art in Embassies Program of the U.S.
Government and has been exhibited at the National Academy of Design and
galleries in Santa Fe, Washington DC, and New York, and is in corporate
collections such as Hallmark and American Express and the Four Seasons
Hotels.
Source:
Dottie Indyke, "Of Place and Time", Southwest Art, April 2006, 108-111
|
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|