BethAnn Lawson

Born and raised in the Bay Area of California, I learned my artistic skills at a very young age from my father. I often accompanied him into "the city" from the East Bay, helping him lug his many gorgeous, oil painted canvases and heavy easels into and around the colorful atmosphere and characters of the Embarcadero Square. A founding member of the San Francisco Street Artists Association, my father surrounded us each and every Saturday with authentic working/starving artists and craftsmen.

I ultimately took a more "practical path" and majored in design at FIDM just a few short blocks from the very spot I spent those many Saturdays. After graduating from college, I moved to Seattle where I worked as a clothing and fabric designer and ultimately, a graphic designer and illustrator for over three decades. Along the way, I taught art in K-6 classrooms, ran art camps through the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department and volunteered several summers as an art mentor for the Seattle Center Academy; a summer program for underprivileged youth.

Upon my father's untimely death in 2011, I was compelled to again pick up my paint brush, this time in earnest, and I have never looked back. I consider my contemporary style a modern take on impressionism, marrying brush-precision with colorful whimsy in a fun mix of both abstract when viewed at close range, to more realistic at a distance. Working from my own photographs as reference, I can lose myself for hours inside of each one as I take apart the images and carefully put them back together emphasizing colors, rhythms and patterns.

I enjoy painting a wide variety of subjects, capturing little secrets of strangers and the amazing architecture of both nature and man.