My oil paintings share a joyful and humorous view of the food, animals, landscapes, and objects that represent our passions and everyday lives.
I paint subjects that bring me delight, from scratch made donuts to my six-year-old's cardboard box fort to a baby Highland cow leaning into its big-horned mama. I want viewers to feel like you could reach into the canvas and squeeze a lemon or feel the texture of a bison and believe this beauty exists in the world--because it does.
Still life subjects are my favorite muse. To find inspiration, I sort through beets at the market, buy cakes from local bakeries, and pour craft beer into pint glasses. I arrange the painting subjects in my studio and occasionally outside to get the desired light, and use a shadow box with a direct light source to create a chiaroscuro effect. I work from photographs of the food items that rot or lose their foam and fizz (for obvious reasons) and to capture every tiny nuance that makes each subject remarkable.
Betsie Richardson works in a studio in Garden City, Idaho, where she takes inspiration from the local food growers and surrounding landscapes for her oil paintings. She sells her work at open studio events, the Capital City Public Market, fine art fairs, and by appointment. She earned a double-major at the University of Washington in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts and Communications, where she fell in love with oil painting.
Find Betsie's "tastefully naughty" greeting cards at retailers around the northwest, including the Boise and Meridian Co-ops and Broadway and Market Street Albertsons.
When not painting, Betsie bake cakes (well) and sourdough (not well) with her nine-year-old, chases her around the soccer pitch, runs in the foothills, camps, backpacks and travels with her family, meditates, and reads novels by the wood burning stove in her creaky old house.
