Mosteiros, Sao Miguel, Azores
/These works of art were created en plein air, from a grassy bluff overlooking Atlantic breakers crashing on the black lava rocks of the Azorean shoreline of Mosteiros.
These works of art were created en plein air, from a grassy bluff overlooking Atlantic breakers crashing on the black lava rocks of the Azorean shoreline of Mosteiros.
Plein air paintings by Brad Betts, ASMA, Santa Barbara, CA
Brad completed over 45 plein air and studio paintings in the winter of 2020/21 from the beautiful seaside city of Santa Barbara, California. Please contact the gallery if you are interested in purchasing or seeing more of this west coast series.
This collection was featured by writer Lisa Kristoff in the Boothbay Register and Wiscasset Newspaper… read the story.
This winter, we spent time on Great Salt Bay in the “temporary town’ created by ice fishing men and women each year. We were driving toward Damariscotta and the bright colors of the fishing shacks across the water caught our eye. Great Salt Bay is not entirely frozen; only the upper reaches freeze solid in the winter and the little temporary town was huddled in this upper cove of the bay.
The first day we saw the town we pulled over on the side of the road and painted. We didn’t walk down into the village but spoke to some of the fishermen and women as they arrived with buckets or pulled their gear off the ice in large sleds.
Several weekends later, we packed our supplies and brought along buckets as seats so we could paint on the ice. It was a gorgeous mid-January day and even though we were sitting in nearly a foot of snow on many inches of ice, we felt warm and inspired by the sun, sky, the outrageously colorful fish shacks and the tracks through the snow that led to each one.
After that weekend, we went through a warm spell and the upper few inches of ice melted into a surface of water. Within weeks, the shacks were removed and the temporary town was gone for another season.
An evening at the beautiful Beach Rose Cottage on Ocean Point. Brad and Ben both painted the flower gardens.
Plein air paintings from a morning walk on Ocean Point. Brad and Ben both painted Ram Island Light from the rocks off Three Trees.
The weather has warmed on Ocean Point. Our brisk morning walks are now slower paced as we stop to enjoy the season’s first beach roses, chat with summer visitors, or paint a surf study to capture the turquoise color of a breaking wave on an overcast day.
After 3 days in Rome, we headed north for a week in Val d’Orcia, a UNESCO World Heritage site in southern Tuscany.
We stayed in a circa 700 stone house just outside the walls of the village of San Quirico d’Orcia.
From San Quirico, you can easily drive to many well-known towns in the Val d’Orcia, including Montalcino, Montepulciano, and Pienza. One of favorite days was spent hiking from town to town, starting in San Quirico and taking paths through the rolling grain fields, past long-abandoned stone structures, to finally hike up to the hill town of Pienza.
We were very fortunate to have a private tour and wine tasting at Altesino, a vineyard and winery in Montalcino that makes, among other incredibly delicious wines, the world-renowned Brunello di Montalcino.
We could not visit Tuscany without at least one day on the coast. We spent the afternoon walking the beach and then enjoyed dinner in the hill town of Porto Santo Stefano.
One day, we do hope to return to the vast and far-reaching vistas of the Val d’Orcia!
We had the pleasure of attending an art residency in February 2019 at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in Temecula California. Dorland is located on a 340-acre nature preserve in the mountains of Riverside County, 60 miles north of San Diego and 100 miles south of LA.
With blue skies and weather in the 60s, we spent each day traveling to a state park or ecological reserve for hiking and painting en plein air before heading back to our residency cabin to watch the sunset. While much of California is, as expected, sprawling with development, we found an abundance of public lands that preserved the state’s raw and natural beauty.
On our last day, we hiked the trail to Wild Horse Peak in the Agua Tibia Wilderness. At the end of the hike, we rock-hopped across a stream and as we started heading to the car we realized we were being passed by butterflies, dozens at a time. We sat down on the stream bank for over an hour as hundreds of Painted Lady butterflies flew by, on their journey from Mexico to the north. An amazing moment at the end of an incredibly inspiring trip, we hope to return to Dorland in the future for another nature-inspired artistic retreat.
Original paintings by Brad Betts, ASMA
Sculpture by Sam Betts
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