ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Beth Avary was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1941. She was raised in a creative family that encouraged her to express herself artistically, and took the maximum art classes allowed in both grade school and high school. During high school she also attended The John Heron Art Institute at night, and a Kansas University summer program for drawing and painting.

After graduating from high school, she studied at the Chicago Art Institute and Northwestern University before transferring to the California College of The Arts where she graduated Cum Laude in 1965 with a BFA. She also spent a summer studying art and philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. In the fall of 1999 she attended a color workshop with Stephen Quiller.

The major influences effecting current work are the Pre-Raphaelite, Symbolist, Expressionist artists, and more recently Eyvind Erle. Her present work is centered on the landscape. Many of the paintings share a feeling of mystical peacefulness with the viewer in the same way that the landscape paintings of Maxfield Parrish do, but the strength of color and form follow more in the tradition of the Expressionist movement instigated by Van Gogh and Gauguin. It is for this reason she calls the work Naturalistic Expressionism.

Beth has traveled widely and has lived for a period of time in four countries outside of the United States; France, Mexico, Thailand and Japan. The art of these countries has also been an influence on her work.

She has shown her work throughout the United States in museums, festivals, galleries, corporations, and Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions. She has also exhibited in Mexico, Japan and Russia. Her paintings are found in private collections throughout the world.