Statement

My paintings and prints focus on landscapes, floral and botanical forms juxtaposed with calligraphy and musical scores. My work explores the relationships between the raw beauty of nature and refined classical form. I use old Italian text and opera scores because I am inspired by the passion of the opera, landscapes of Tuscany, and the olive trees and vineyards amid the stone columns and frescoes of ancient Rome.

I choose subtle forms of plants, the hidden spirals and whirls of seeds. These ignored subjects are magnified and rendered in natural earth tones with a hint of color. Calligraphy and musical notes play off the lyrical quality of plants. Water lilies and lotuses burst into song over musical notes.

Nature is both growth and decay. Beauty exists in sticky pods bursting forth in spring and in the brown leaves matted on the cold autumn earth. In paying attention to this cyclical movement, I attempt to discover the wholeness of life.

We, as organic bodies, can use plants as a reference to how we inhabit our physical world. By seeing the architecture of the "spine" of a fern, we come to understand another connection to ourselves. In today's world when humans are becoming increasingly disassociated with their own bodies and the natural world around them, I attempt to reflect the common root.

Betsy Bauer
Santa Fe, New Mexico
2006

A Conversation with Betsy Bauer

Did your interest in plants begin early in your life?

Oh, definitely. I remember being about seven years old in my aunt’s garden. She had one of those beautiful old English gardens with every color of flower. I was smaller than most of the plants. I wanted to live in that garden. My mother also had a garden when I was little and it was magical to me. Those early experiences probably planted a seed. But I didn’t really focus on plants as an artist until I went to Italy- I really absorbed Italy- and then finally moved to Santa Fe.

Italy seems to dominate your work in many ways. What is it about the country that inspires you so deeply?

One of my strongest experiences was visiting an Italian ruin and seeing new grass growing in it and around it. The place was Ostia Antica, outside of Rome. The fragments of ruins there and the sculptures of women with broken wings entranced me. I remember turning and seeing a puddle of water with the ruins reflected into it along with the new grass. It was a temporal moment, almost like a mirror into the past... I wanted that sense of the ancient, of layers and layers of history in my work. I wanted the spirit, the color, the warmth and of course the music.

Many of your paintings include musical notation as well as words underneath the plants and the landscapes. What’s the connection?

I feel there is a strong bond between music and plants. For one thing, I am very drawn to ancient notation, for it’s reference to the long ago past. This includes both calligraphy and musical notes. I go into antique stores in Europe and buy pages of notation without even knowing what they are. I first started using music when I was looking for ancient Italian writing. But I found a 100-year-old copy of La Boheme. I thought, ah, music and Italian landscape. There’s just a rhythm going on in nature. A fern is like a spine is like a row of musical notes. So the music has to do with my visualization. The notes are very evocative and mysterious to me.

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