RAL Juried Members Spring Show

Pamela Betts is a representational painter based in the Washington, DC metro area. She received her BA in Fine Art at Moravian College (now University) in Bethlehem, PA in 1990. Through her love of art, she discovered art conservation and earned a Master of Science in Art Conservation from Winterthur Museum/University of Delaware in 2000. She has worked for many years as an art conservator in which the close study of various methods and materials used by centuries of painters is a constant inspiration.

Pamela long pursued figure drawing from life before more recently returning to landscape painting with oil paint. A culmination of several events led her back into exploring her natural surrounds, a favorite childhood pastime growing up on a small farm. Going back out into the landscape proved to be meditative and contemplative, and the chance to capture the feelings it inspired with paint proved healing. Expeditions into the landscape continue to be a source of both exhilaration and empathy with the endless source of beauty and inspiration coupled with the multiplying concerns for the health of our planet. Attempting to capture feelings provoked by these experiences into paint proves simultaneously ever challenging but deeply rewarding. Pamela concentrates on responding to the effects of light and atmosphere with compelling compositions and moods. In the process, she investigates various approaches to mark-making, design, and subtle degrees of abstraction in hopes of making new and lasting connections with her viewers.
Pamela especially enjoys painting outdoors ‘en plein air' where she embraces the challenge of directly observing and recording changing sensations of light, atmosphere, and mood. She finds that occasionally switching back to the figure or to still life work is deeply enjoyable and rounds out her artistic practice- with each subject informing the other. She is an award-winning artist who has been juried into plein air competitions in Maryland and Virginia and has exhibited her work in galleries in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.