The Marion Art Center is pleased to announce the upcoming opening of an exhibition entitled “Balance: Real & Abstract” featuring artists Betsy Payne Cook and Bess Woodworth. From Friday, September 8 through Saturday, October 7, both of the Art Center’s galleries will be filled with paintings by the artists. A reception in their honor will be held on Friday, September 8 at the Marion Art Center, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. It is free and open to the public. At 7:00 pm that evening, the two artists will speak briefly about the creative inspiration and process behind their exhibited work. On Saturday, September 9 at 10:00 am, the public is invited to the MAC Studio for a mini workshop with pouring transparent watercolors on yupo paper. Led by Bess Woodworth, participants can have fun creating different textures and shapes and playing with stencils on the yupo, a plastic paper that does not absorb color. By pouring, the colors mingle on the surface, loosening up a painting and making it abstract. The workshop is offered free of charge.
Artist Bess Woodworth began her creative endeavors as a child, attending a Waldorf School in which the curriculum revolved around art. She began to formally develop her artistic talents twenty-five years after a successful career as a reading specialist. An alumna of Boston University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston, Bess has been a volunteer in the education department of The Museum of Fine Arts of Boston, touring groups of children through the museum. A member of numerous art councils and associations in the Boston area, including the Cambridge Art Association and the Concord Art Association, Woodworth is also involved in the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild and the Tubac Center for the Arts in her second home of Tucson, AZ. The themes of her paintings cover a variety of natural subjects, and she has also worked on a series of conceptual paintings about relationships. Most recently, Woodworth has been experimenting with watercolor pouring on yupo paper. Her work shows an imaginative use of natural light that produces a luminescent quality, and her compositions produce an emotional mood. She explores relationships – in nature and between people.
Pastel painter Betsy Payne Cook attended the College of St. Rose in her hometown of Albany, NY, earning a B.S. Art Education & M.S. Special Education. Cape Cod was always a favorite getaway destination, and she made it her home in 1994, when she returned to the states after living in a small village in Wales, Great Britain for nine years. She is a juried artist member of the Pastel Society of America and has achieved signature membership status of the Pastel Painters Society of Cape Cod, where she also serves as the Chair for the Signature Committee. Betsy is acknowledged as a juried Master Artist at the Cape Cod Art Association. She participates in local and national juried exhibitions and is a member of several art organizations, to include the Sandwich Arts Alliance and the South Cape Artists. Represented by Gallery Artrio, she exhibits at Woodruff’s Art Store Gallery in Mashpee Commons. Betsy records her thoughts and experiences as an artist in her newsletter, Painting In and Out, hoping to provide inspiration and insight while sharing her love of pastels and her life as an artist. Betsy teaches pastel workshops and classes, and is on the faculty of the Falmouth Arts Center and the Cultural Center of Cape Cod. She also organizes Cape Cod plein air workshops and destination workshops, to include and upcoming week-long plein air painting workshop in Wales, Great Britain this fall.