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.
If you’re planning a trip to Maine this summer, check out Danielle’s Insider Tips published in the March 2021 issue of Maine Magazine!
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 were so fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to Italy this month! We spent 3 days in Rome and fell in love with its exquisite, ancient beauty.
We stayed in Trastevere, a family neighborhood southwest of the Tiber River and the historical center of Rome. We loved this neighborhood, with its daily farmer’s market outside our door. When the market cleared in the afternoons, the local children would flock to the park and begin playing soccer and other outdoor games until evening.
Our AirBnB apartment was in a square complex with a courtyard in the middle. We would see women hanging their laundry in the evening after work, and often heard Italian voices rising up to our room at night.
Trastevere has narrow streets and colorful buildings, filled with greenery, ancient churches and landmarks, and numerous restaurants. It is not, however, all tourist-driven and there are many signs of Roman life.
At night, the town streets are filled with walkers and entertainers, and young people drinking and socializing in the streets.
We walked 8-10 miles a day and saw nearly all of the historic Rome center. On our last day, we bought a bottle of wine and settled down in a park to soak in the birds, green grass and sunshine.
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
Powered by Squarespace.