Betty Argiros a native of Rockland County, New York, Betty Argiros began painting in high school, intending to pursue a career in art, but life had other plans. She moved to New York City and then to upstate New York in the 1970s where she spent several years working with and counseling troubled teenagers. However, her thoughts and ambitions were never far from the canvas, and in 2001 when she retired, she was finally able to devote herself fully to her art.

Betty works in oils, watercolors and pastels, and her landscapes are inspired by the great natural beauty of rural northeastern Pennsylvania where she now resides. She has studied oil with landscape painter Peter Fiore, and watercolor Pat Weaver. She has attended workshops with landscape painter Barbara Jaenicke in oil and pastel, Randall Saxton, and, Colley Whisson. She has also studied portrait painting with Romel de la Torre, and still lives with Qiang Huang.

Artist’s Note 

As a landscape painter, I am attracted to fields, farms and clouds, to water, woods and trees. And when I paint them, I’m trying to express what it is that took my breath away when I first came upon them in a particular scene.

For a while I was driving my grandson to work in the early morning, which gave me countless “wow” moments as the rising sun played with the landscape. I could actually “see” the air—the damp light, the haze of frost or snow. I’m always amazed by how the atmospheric variables can transform a scene and make it almost unrecognizable from one day to the next.

I often go for drives in the country with my camera, up and down the back roads, looking for the perfect interplay of light and land that stops me in my tracks. Sometimes just glancing out the window I’ll catch a certain configuration of clouds, or the sun coming through the trees at an exquisite angle, and I’m just awestruck. I love trying to recreate those moments, mixing the paints and playing with color until it matches what I see in my mind’s eye.

Painting for me takes a kind of disciplined patience. I’ve learned to expect days when nothing’s going to look good on the canvas, so I don’t even waste my time. Other days, the work is pure joy and I can hardly bear to stop. Those are the days when I’m actually able to make visible what I’m experiencing emotionally, and when that happens, I remember why it is that I paint.

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