After winning a scholarship to study art in 1942 Betsy Smith left High Wycombe College of Art three years later to embark on a richly varied career. Starting out in textiles and fabric design and progressing through advertising and after a spell in post war America she then set up a Danish decor import business in the mid sixties. Throughout she continued to develop as an artist and since 1986 has lived and worked in Shropshire and more recently has spent some time in France.
‘I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t drawing for fun. Why paint? Because it’s colour, it’s inspiring and joyful, as artist Gillian Ayers once said ‘Let’s see what paint can do
Betsy is perhaps best known for her Shropshire inspired landscapes which Twenty Twenty Gallery has been showing for many years. ‘Because it changes, because there is endless interpretation and because it includes the sky which is amazing! My first love of paint mediums is watercolour, unfairly described as difficult but only if you try to contain it; let it flow and it will hold and reflect light.’
And this is the essence of Betsy Smith’s work: joyous inspirational images that hold and reflect light and indeed her personality.
There is well over half a century of life and love in her pictures with more to come!