Artist Statement
I am an artist-educator who loves teaching, and feels strongly that everyone should be making art, and that we should be fostering visual intelligence and the non-hierarchical flexibility of creative thinking in everyone.
I am a painter who uses drawing, collage, and printmaking as part of my process. My work is primarily narrative and often figurative; using visual imagery to tell a story about our corner of the universe as I see it. I work with mark-making and color to create a sense of intimacy and presence in my images.
My most recent one-person exhibit was “Every Picture Tells a Story” at the Wenburg Gallery, Fonseca Center, Masters School, Dobbs Ferry NY in March of 2020. I currently has 3 paintings in “THEN NOW WHEN, The Winter Show” at Gallery18 at the Riverdale Y in the Bronx, February 2 to March 26, 2023, one painting in the upcoming exhibit “Is It Me? “, March 10 to April 14, 2023, at The Art Effect's Trolley Barn Gallery, in Poughkeepsie NY.
To see more of my work, please go to elizabethdebethuneart.com
Educational Background
I have a BA in Fine Art from Yale University and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from SUNY Purchase. I have also studied at the New York Studio School, Manhattan Graphics Center, and with painter Brenda Goodman. Additionally, I was a pioneering artist at the Bronx River Art Center Studio program and did two monotype printing residencies at Women’s Studio Workshop and one at Vermont Studio Center. I was affiliated with the YoHo Studios in Yonkers, but now work out of my home studio barn. I am especially delighted to have been a “critter” at the Crit Lab since January 2022.
Teaching Artist Experience
I have almost thirty years teaching experience, 16 as the inaugural art teacher at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College in the Bronx, and over 12 years as a teaching artist with many organizations including Arts Westchester. At HSAS, I designed a hands-on, interactive curriculum for this survey studio course that encompassed basic design, drawing, painting, 3-D design and sculpture, with fundamentals of art vocabulary, concepts and related art history.
As a teaching artist, I worked for 12 years for Marquis Studios, now Brooklyn-based, the Westchester Arts Council (now ArtsWestchester) and, to a lesser extent, the Hudson River Museum, traveling to schools all over the NYC outer boroughs and in all different pockets of Westchester County. (Before GPS, with an open Hagstrom map book on the front seat of the car.) I also learned to be ready to teach anything, to listen to what the school or organization needed and to adapt my skill set to solving that problem for them. The result was an extraordinary range of artist’s books, printmaking, painting and drawing and paper engineering projects, as well as a few early computer graphics workshops. And there were murals, so many murals… One spring I conducted 6 mural projects simultaneously.
Events
No Events
Classes, Workshops
No Events
