Artist's Info
Betty Nelson was born in Roswell NM (1923), in the Pecos River Valley of southwestern New Mexico. Her earliest artistic influence was the Roswell Museum and Art Center – acclaimed for it’s educational programs and collections of works by Peter Hurd, Henriette Wyeth, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and Luis Jimenez.
She began her formal training in commercial design and illustration at Texas Tech University, and on scholarship at Parsons School of Design, NYC. Concentrating in the fine arts, she obtained her B.F.A. in painting from University of Colorado, Boulder, and has continued her education at University of Colorado, Red Rocks Community College, Community College of Denver, and University of Denver.
Betty has exhibited in solo and juried shows, and her work has received multiple awards, with organizations like Art Students League of Denver, Arvada Art Center, Aspen Invitational Show, Cheyenne Frontier Days, Foothills Art Center, Gilpin County Art Association, Jewish Community Center LFAG Show, Littleton Fine Arts Guild, Littleton 10 Invitational Show, Ouray Annual Show, Pueblo State Fair, Rocky Mountain National Watermedia Exhibition, and Vail Collectors’ Show.
Her drawings and paintings have been featured in galleries such as Blake Street Studios, Boettcher Performing Arts Center, Brass Cheque Gallery, Blue Door, Too, Chinook Gallery, and Depot Art Center. Numerous pieces are held in private collections.
Betty was never far from her sketchbooks, pens and brushes, and she enjoyed creating works of local plein air and figure drawing throughout her career. An inspired student of the world’s history of art, her canvases were most frequently informed by abstract expressionism, western traditions and the contemporary input of her fellow artists. Much of Betty’s work is concerned with the interplay of form and process, and her enjoyment of the physicality of painting with expressive brush strokes and playful color pallets is clearly evident. Her works are a delight to view and are at once highly developed and deceptively simple.