Betsy Chaffin

Betsy Chaffin works in a variety of forms including paintings, collages, monotypes, photographs and sculpure. She lives and works in Spring Island, SC. Of her recent work, Betsy writes, "The paintings are metaphors for my responses to a time, place, or person; for instance, the flowering coral bean in early May, my mother going for chemotherapy, the birth of a grandchild, a memory of Fran, the mood of being on the Colleton River at sunset. Many times I begin a painting and what it is about changes. The work is intuitive, a non linear process. It is a dance between the conscious and unconscious. It is about my inner life; reflections, memories, an expanding and contracting sense of time, fears. I think the paintings are internal glimpses, more like haku poetry than novels. And the process is filled with continual self-doubt. The work is made up of cross-hatches, indirect ways of mark-making. I began using cross-hatch marks when painting oil over tar. I responded to the physicality and texture of marking through the oil and revealing the underlying tar."