Bethany A. McConnell is a painter, illustrator, and intuitive energy healer based in the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys abstract, flowing, strange, feminine, and natural influences in her art.
“My work has always been a little weird, a little dark, a little light, a little witchy”.
She used to think that discipline and focus in a creative medium were inherently valuable and necessary to consider herself an artist. Now it’s easier to work based on her preferences, desires, joy, and connection to her Soul. Bethany’s aspirations for the next 5 years are to learn stained glass and create her pigments, natural paints, and dyes from earthen materials.
Her studio name, Buffalo Woman Creative comes from her native name “Buffalo Woman”, gifted from her great-grandmother and extended grandmother. She’s an enrolled tribal member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes. Her maternal line is Hidatsa, Mandan, and extended family branches into many other tribes and ancestry. Her father’s line is Scottish and Irish ancestry.
For most of her time as an artist, she’s worked in acrylic, mixed media painting, drawing with graphite and colored pencil, ink, marker, and collage. There’s a season of life when chalkboard sign art and paint pen were her daily bread and butter and she remembers those years with gratitude for the challenges and change it brought to her life.
Bethany is a professionally trained energy healer and energy intuitive. Her healing practice and healing path through childhood trauma influence the art pieces she’s created over the last 20 years. Looking at some pieces she sees moments disconnected and separate from herself. Looking at others, she sees finding her center again, balanced and connected to the earth. She’s grateful for the gifted and generous artists and healing mentors in her life.
Her two birth stories have also shaped her work and life in profound ways, transforming her as an artist. She gave birth to her first child at the hospital. And then free-birthed her second child in the bathtub of her apartment. Her husband caught their son while their midwife and birth doula circled the block looking for parking on a busy Friday night. Truer parts have come into the Light for expression since giving birth and riding the primal waves of pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood.
She identifies as queer/bisexual, witch, healer, artist, gardener, and woman.
Bethany uses she/her pronouns.
Bethany grew up in Billings, Montana, and relocated to Seattle in 2006 for graphic design at The Art Institute of Seattle. She’s called the Pacific Northwest her home for 19 years and holds deep gratitude for this magical place. She currently lives in Edmonds, Washington with her spouse, two little boys, and two kitties, and can be found gardening on her small balcony dreaming of her future homestead, squeezing in time to be with the trees, or going to coffee shops with her family.
[email protected]
Edmonds, WA
