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BETHANN LAWSON
As an artist, Bethann Lawson is often asked by people unfamiliar with my work to describe it. "Are they landscapes? Portraits? Do you paint abstracts?"
Right or wrong, I've settled on the term "modern impressionism", as I think that most deftly expresses my style of painting; not exactly representational, but certainly not abstract as we know it in the modern age. As far as subject matter, I tend to paint whatever inspiration sparks, so my paintings tie together through style rather than subject. I could be working on an urban street scene from Seattle or a San Francisco landmark at the same time I might be painting the inside of a dishwasher or memories from my last vacation.
The number one thing I strive for in each of my pieces is, "What is it about this painting that makes you want to keep looking at it?" I want you, the collector, to have a piece of art that keeps engaging long after it’s adopted into your collection. I hope you're able to find something new every time you catch it from a different angle or rehang it somewhere new.
So, I attack the work like a giant, intricate puzzle, taking apart an image and piecing it back together using familiar shapes and color, but.... the trick is only doing a part of the work. I always leave a small part for you, metaphorically leaving out the last pieces of the puzzle for you to complete with your own imagination and ideas ...and memories.
I've been painting nearly all my life. As a young girl, I often accompanied my father into "the city" from the East Bay, helping him lug his many gorgeous, oil painted canvases and heavy easels from the large trunk of his blue Maverick into the colorful atmosphere and characters of the Embarcadero Square. A street artist in San Francisco, my father surrounded himself each and every weekend with authentic working/starving artists and craftsmen. Those years of raw creativity and sacrifice for one's art left its indelible impression.
I took a more practical (? debatable) path, majored in design, and found my way to Seattle where I worked as a textile and graphic designer for decades, always dabbling in something personally creative on the side to keep my ideas flowing. It wasn't until the untimely death of my father in 2011 that I returned to my love of painting on canvas, this time bigger and bolder than I have ever gone before.