Artist Statement
People are my muse. My contemporary portrait paintings, sourced from photos I take myself, celebrate the ordinary and extraordinary people who capture her imagination. The spark that begins my creative process is what I find humorous in the people I choose as subjects. Once committed, I combine the formal elements that go into creating a work of art with a spiritual connection that breathes life into the people I paint.
My interest in figurative realism began in college majoring in sculpture and then in my profession as a massage therapist sculpting living bodies rather than clay. When I began to paint, hands--the essential tools of massage--were my first subjects.
About Betzi Stein
Betzi Stein was born in Philadelphia and from an early age was obsessed with art-making of all types: drawing, painting, sculpture and jewelry. After moving to Los Angeles, she took figure drawing classes at Chouinard Art Institute where at age twelve, she first experienced drawing from the nude model. Upon high school graduation, she received a summer scholarship to Art Center College of Design.
Having decided to forgo college for a time, she spent two years traveling and studying art and culture in Britain, Western Europe and Morocco.
Stein attended college at California State University, Long Beach earning a B.F.A. in Sculpture and Jewelry Design, after which she spent five years as a professional jeweler.
Her involvement in creating art took a back seat while she built and sustained her massage therapy practice, Betzi Stein Massage Therapy. "Being drawn to the massage profession has always felt like a natural extension of my love of drawing and sculpting the body", says Stein.
In recent years, she returned seriously to painting the figure, initially in colored pencil and now, exclusively in acrylic, with her primary focus being contemporary portraiture. She works in her home studio in the Palms section of Los Angeles.
Betzi Stein is an active member of TAG Gallery, the International Society of Acrylic Painters, Los Angeles Art Association and Women Painters West. Her art has received numerous awards, and has been shown and collected throughout the United States.