Betty M. Wilson: Exercises in Form, Composition and Color

Artist’s monograph designed for Marin Art and Garden Center

By Kate Eilertsen with contributions by Chester Arnold, Twyla Ruby and Antonia Adezio

From Kate Eilertsen’s essay:
Betty M. Wilson’s life was a constant artistic voyage. All phases of this voyage, including studies in portraiture, geometry and abstraction, were exercises in form, composition and color. Having majored in design at California College of Arts and Crafts, she never abandoned those roots. Always prioritizing design principles including pattern, proportion, balance, contrast, rhythm and variety, her works were masterful in their use of these elements. Her paintings represent a combination of intuition, sensitivity, craftsmanship and profound commitment to the design principles she so admired.

From Chester Arnold’s essay:
Betty Wilson came of age in a turbulent generation—a time of war and dizzying change, and of revolutions in culture, as well. The trajectory of art’s life in the second half of the 20th century is clearly reflected in her works, from the early earnestness of expressive representational works, through Pop-inspired reflections of portrait and sill-life, to the widely-ranging abstract paintings that were the fruition of all her finest instincts for composition, color and form. The strength of her work arises partly from its deep understanding of pictorial dynamics, of the language of design that she communicated so well to students over the decades. But there is an inexplicable vitality of personality that pulses here, as well, that magic that gives design language its meaning, its humanity, its grace.

9 x 11 inches
48 pages