Page 202 - Famous

BETTE RIDGEWAY

Lives and works in Santa Fe, NM USA
w w w.ridgewaystudio.com

Trained as a watercolorist, Bette Ridgeway’s love affair with water media To fully appreciate my work requires a willingness not only to see with your eyes,
began as a child in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. She has but also to listen with your heart. For, amid the colors and forms, the dynamic
traveled the globe; painting, teaching, exhibiting her work; embracing the movement of light and shadow, you might discover something unexpected,
customs and colors of the diverse cultures in Africa, Australia, Europe, Asia held captive in this purely visual medium. Like a composer who creates with
and Latin America. Her formal art education at Russell Sage College and the melodies and harmonies, I compose with color. To capture that moment in a
Art Students League gave her the basic tools for creating art. Her personal great opera when the soprano arrives at that perfect high C… when the audi-
style was a long time in development. She was fortunate, in 1979, to meet ence waits…breathless - and a collective shiver runs through the opera house.
Paul Jenkins - which turned out to be a life-changing experience. Jenkins saw This experience for me is heaven. The transcendence, the sudden clarity as
her traditional watercolors and advised her to work larger and to focus on beauty becomes truth - that is the music. I attempt to create in each of my
color, space, time and emotions. She took his advice and spent the next 20 paintings, recorded with juicy, fluid pigments on a variety of surfaces. I am led
years developing her signature style in which she uses many layers of thin, by my intuition and spend time meditating before each painting session. An
watery acrylics on unstretched linen to produce fluidity similar to traditional empty space is created within me into which the raw elements - color, form and
watercolor. The effect is both sensual and powerful. Now Ridgeway works on light - flow. Once there, they are tended, nurtured, allowed to gestate, before
a variety of surfaces including steel and aluminum. Ridgeway is represented being carefully expressed. There is an intimacy to pushing layers of paint around;
by many U.S. Galleries. In Santa Fe, she is represented exclusively by Tadu* whether on linen or steel - manipulating it into submission. The challenge is to
Contemporary Art. (* ”A Way to See” in Japanese). Her paintings are included stop the movement at the perfect moment, freezing the image and stopping
in many private and public collections including the John Deere Collection, the the process. The linen is cropped and stretched; the work on metal is sealed
Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, VA, Criterion Communications in King of with many layers of thick acrylic resin, glass-like and impervious, protected for
Prussia, PA and Northwestern College in St. Paul, MN. the ages. I call this process layering light.
 CRUCIBLE OF CREATION, ACRYLIC & RESIN ON STEEL 16X16 IN. / 40X40 CM.
 KYOTO NIGHT I, ACRYLIC WITH RESIN ON STEEL 12X12 IN / 30X30 CM.
ORION’S BIRTH, ACRYLIC & RESIN ON STEEL 48X24 IN / 122X61 CM. 

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FAMOUS
CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS