Betsy Eby
Betsy Eby is an American artist and musician. She lives and works in Columbus, Georgia, and Wheaton Island, Maine.
Life
Eby was born on April 3, 1967, in Seaside, Oregon. In 1972, her family moved to the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. Her father worked in the timber industry, while her mother worked in community college admissions. At the age of five, Eby began playing the piano and studying the traditional classical repertoire. She continues to study under master musicians.Eby earned her bachelor's degree in art history from the University of Oregon, with an emphasis on ancient Greek, Roman and Asian antiquities. In 1990 she moved to Seattle, Washington, where she lived and worked until 2013, In that year, she and her husband, American artist Bo Bartlett, moved to Columbus, Georgia. They now divide their time between Columbus, Georgia and Wheaton Island, Maine. In 2018, Eby and Bartlett opened the Bo Bartlett Center at Columbus State University. This interactive gallery space aims to engage nearby communities through arts programming.
Work
Betsy Eby primarily works in encaustic, a painting medium composed of hot beeswax, damar resin, and pigments. The encaustic technique dates back to the 4th century B.C., when it was originally used for creating Egyptian mummy funerary portraits. Encaustic was not a common medium for painters until it was revived by Pop artist Jasper Johns in his iconic flag paintings.In 2018, Betsy Eby was selected to represent the United States as a Cultural Exchange Artist through the U.S. State Department's Art in Embassies program in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. As a cultural exchange artist, Eby aimed to promote female empowerment through creativity by collaborating with local artists and participating in television and radio interviews.