Statement

I am a representational, figurative artist who makes images reflecting my physical and social environments; I pay attention to the act of perception and how it defines a subject.

My work springs from a need to look, and respond to the narrative fabric of what I see. My subjects are mainly autobiographical; drawn from the people, places and events in my life. I communicate the nuances of social interaction, physical atmosphere, or sense of place that I feel, and develop an imagined space that blends the observed and the felt. To fluidly express these perceptual and narrative weavings, I combine monotype printing, collage, drawing and painting. The complex spatial reading of my multilayered surfaces dance between figure and ground.

Although trained as a painter, I have turned to monotype printing because the simultaneously painterly and graphic surface captures the play between flatness and dimension. Recently I have developed an iconography of repeated forms through stencils use, and these flat forms repeated add a new layer to the dance.

Biography

Elizabeth de Béthune is a painter who has delved deeply into printmaking processes, particularly monotype printing. She received a BA in Fine Art from Yale University in 1979, and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from SUNY Purchase in 1991. In the years between those degrees, she studied painting and drawing extensively at the New York Studio School, Brooklyn College’s MFA program, and with the painter Brenda Goodman. After receiving her MFA, she studied etching at the Manhattan Graphics Center. In the 1990’s she began incorporating monotype printmaking into her art making, and has pursued it intensively in the last decade. She has studied various methods printmaking at the Lower Eastside Printshop, Women’s Studio Workshop and the Norwalk Center for Contemporary Printmaking. She has been a printmaking fellow at the Womens' Studio Workshop (October 2003 & January 2005) and the Vermont Studio Center (January 2006). Summer 2008 will find Elizabeth at Skidmore College for the High School Art Teachers’ Fellowship Residency.

Elizabeth’s work has been exhibited through the tri-state area. Recent shows include group shows Blue Prints, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, Connecticut, Summer 2007, Windows to the Soul: Blue Door Art Association at the Yonkers Public Library, Yonkers, New York, Fall 2006, Tidal Currents: Upstream Gallery at the Yonkers Public Library, New York, 2006, as well as one and two person shows Alternated Planes, March 2006, at the Upstream Gallery in Dobbs Ferry, NY, Groups and Gatherings, May-June, 2006, at the Earlville Opera House Art Gallery in Earlville, New York, Two Rivers, November, 2005, at the Broad Street Gallery at Trinity College in Hartford, CT and Gatherings— Images of People and Groups, May 2005, at the Yonkers Riverfront Library as well as participation in YOH—An Art Event in downtown Yonkers in June 2005. She and her five artists sisters appeared in Sisters Show Art/3 as part of the Blue Door Gallery’s Downtown Yonkers Art Exhibit in June 2006.

You can see Elizabeth’s work at the upcoming YOHO Artists’ Open Studio May 17-18, 2008, and at Images Gallery in Briarcliff Manor in Fall 2008.

More about Elizabeth:
Elizabeth de Béthune has been teaching art for several years. She spent over twelve years as a teaching artist working with Marquis Studios in New York City, and with both the Hudson River Museum and the Westchester Arts Council in Westchester, New York. Presently she teaches Art at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College. She has also taught Monotype Printing as an adjunct at the College of New Rochelle.