Poured Paintings on Canvas

Video by Bette Ridgeway

Watch artist Bette Ridgeway as she works with her team in a warehouse in Santa Fe, NM, to  create a 15′ x 21′ triptych installed January 12, 2019, at the Boro Tower in Tysons, VA. (The borough is a new district within Tysons being developed by The Meridian Group, The Rockefeller Group, and Gensler.) Patti Reuss, Monika Kaden, Sue Roderick, and Abel Roderick were assistants on the project from April 2018–October 2018. Visit Ridgeway’s website for additional photos and information on the commission.

Bette Ridgeway is best known for her large-scale, luminous poured canvases that push the boundaries of light, color, and design. Her youth spent in the beautiful Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York and her extensive global travel have informed her colorful palette. For the past two decades, the high desert light of Santa Fe, NM, has fueled Ridgeway’s art practice. Her three decades of mentorship by the acclaimed Abstract Expressionist Paul Jenkins set her on her lifetime journey of non-objective painting on large canvas. She explores the interrelation and change of color in various conditions and on a variety of surfaces. Her artistic foundations in line drawing, watercolor, graphic design, and oils gave way to acrylics, which she found to be more versatile for her layering technique.

Ridgeway has spent the last thirty years developing her signature technique, called “layering light,” in which she uses many layers of thin, transparent acrylics on linen and canvas to produce a fluidity and viscosity similar to traditional watercolor. Delving further, Ridgeway expanded her work into 3D, joining paint and resin to aluminum and steel with sculptures of minimal towers. Look for these luminous works in  Vol. VII #2 of The Woven Tale Press.

This film was produced by film maker Carlo Zanella.