william betts
DESCRIPTION
Autumn 2010TRANSCRIPT
RICHARDLEVY
GALLERY
505. 766. 9888
Richard Levy Gallery LLC
http://levygallery.com/
William Betts
Fall 2010
2/11/10 3:36 PMDecorating Ideas: A Designer's Manhattan Apartment is Fit for Family
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The walls in the master bedroomare covered in manila hemp fromPhillip Jeffries; the painting overthe chest of drawers is by WilliamBetts.
Photographer: William Waldron
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William Betts • Lines
William Betts
Boundary
2010
acrylic on panel
44 x 72 in
111.8 x 182.9 cm
$12,000$12,000
William Betts • Lines
William Betts
Fireball
2010
acrylic on panel
30 x 60 in
91.4 x 152.94 cm
$11,000$11,000
William Betts • Lines
William Betts
Forest
2009
acrylic on panel
32 x 97 in
81.28 x 246.38 cm
$20,000$20,000
William Betts • Lines
William Betts
Flash
2010
acrylic on panel
49 x 97 in
119.38 x 246.38 cm
$20,000$20,000
William BettsLine Paintings
Artist Statement
My interest is in the exploration of the visual experience and howtechnology can enhance the sensation of seeing and provide views andallow for visual explorations we could not otherwise experience. Thesepaintings have their roots in digital photography, industrial technologyprocesses, and classical painting. Using personal photographs assource images the paintings represent a sample of digital informationtaken from these photographs and expanded to create an abstract workthat maintains its organic origin and essence while being somethingentirely new and synthetic.
The resulting paintings capture and amplify the essence of the view byfocusing on their organic rhythms and color relationships while removingother objective information. Void of forms or context, the visual sensationis isolated from memory and association that would dilute theexperience.
Using a proprietary technology of my own development for paintapplication, I execute the work in acrylic or oil paint using colors mixedspecifically for the image. While time consuming, the process allows fora high level of detail and resolution without which the paintings would failto reach their potential.
Bio
William Betts was born and raised in New York City. In 1991 hegraduated with honors from Arizona State University with a BA in StudioArt and a minor in philosophy.
26 CHICAGO READER | MARCH 3, 2006 | SECTION TWO
Jungerman, DVD projection, through Sat3/25. EOpens Fri 3/3, 6-10 PM. Sat noon-5. 773-344-1940
Portals 742 N. Wells. Jorge Simes, paint-ings and works on paper, through Sat 3/18.Tue-Fri 10-5, Sat 11-5. 312-642-1066
Prospectus 1210 W. 18th. Work by EdPaschke, Roger Brown, Harold Allen, andothers, through Fri 4/28. Wed-Sun noon-5,Fri till 6. 312-733-6132
Printworks 311 W. Superior #105. BruceThayer, works on paper, through Sat 3/11.Tue-Sat 11-5. 312-664-9407
Reversible Eye 1103 N. California.Nicholas Kashian, paintings, through Sat3/25. EOpens Fri 3/3, 7-10 PM. Sat 1-5.773-862-1232
Byron Roche 750 N. Franklin. Work bygallery artists, through Fri 3/10. Tue-Sat 11-6. 312-654-0144
Roosevelt Univ. Gage Gallery 18 S.Michigan. Work by members of the ChicagoAlliance of African AmericanPhotographers, through Fri 3/10. Mon-Fri9-6. 312-341-6458
Rowland Contemporary 1118 W. Fulton.Collaborative work by Kelly Kaczynski andTodd Matei, through Sat 3/11. Sat 11-5. 312-421-6275
Saint Xavier Univ. 3700 W. 103rd. PatrickMiceli, installations of toys and fast-foodpackaging, through Mon 3/6 C. Mon-Fri 10-5, Sat 10-3. 773-298-3081
Judy A. Saslow 300 W. Superior. Work fromJean Dubuffet’s art brut collection, throughSat 4/1. Tue-Sat 10-6. 312-943-0530
Schneider 230 W. Superior. JanetPritchard, George Ciardi, landscape photos,through Fri 3/31. EOpens Fri 3/3, 5-7:30PM. Tue-Fri 10:30-5, Sat 11-5. 312-988-4033
School of the Art Institute Gallery X 280S. Columbus. “The ContemporaryBaroque,” work by ten artists, Tue 3/7-Thu3/30. EOpens Tue 3/7, 4-6 PM. Tue-Fri12:30-5:30, Sat 10-3. 312-857-7150
SAIC LG Space 37 S. Wabash #220. “ActiveLiberty,” politically themed group show, Thu3/9-Thu 4/6. Mon-Thu 10:30-5:30. 312-899-5131
Schopf 942 W. Lake. Gabriella Boros,paintings and works on paper; RyanMandell, sculpture and video installations,through Fri 4/7. Tue-Sat 11-5. 312-432-1630
Carrie Secrist 835 W. Washington. RichardHull, works on paper, through Sat 3/18.Tue-Fri 10:30-5:30, Sat 11-5. 312-491-0917
65Grand 1378 W. Grand. Jon Satrom, com-puter-generated wallpaper; RebekahLevine, installation, through Fri 3/31. Fri-Sat noon-5:30. 312-243-4325
Skestos Gabriele 212 N. Peoria. MelissaMcGill, photos and sculpture, through Sat3/11. Tue-Fri 11-6, Sat noon-5. 312-243-1112
South Shore Cultural Center 7059 S.South Shore. Senior Artists’ Network exhib-it, through Fri 3/31. EReception Sun 3/5,noon-2 PM. 312-744-4551
Steelelife 4655 S. King, 2nd fl. Work by local African-American artists,through Sun 3/5 C. Tue-Sat noon-7.773-538-4773
33 Collective 1029 W. 35th, 3rd fl. Cheng-Yung Kuo, Jennifer Moore, Megan Harrigan,photos, through Fri 3/3 C. Sat 1-4. 708-337-4534
Three Seasons 648 W. Randolph. Workby Peter Gustav Lofstrom and Ender,through Fri 3/3 C. Mon 11-6. 312-285-4533
Three Walls 119 N. Peoria #2A. AndreaCohen, installation, through Sat 4/8. Partof the multisite project “The Happiness ISeek” (see Special Events). Tue-Sat noon-6.312-432-3972
Uncommon Ground 3800 N. Clark (cafe).Work by Kim Frieders, Marc McGowan, andLacey Windschitl, Mon 3/6-Sun 4/2.EReception Thu 3/9, 5-8 PM. Daily 9 AM-2AM. 773-929-3680
Univ. of Illinois Art Lounge StudentCenter West, 828 S. Wolcott. “Artwork ofthe Oppressed,” work by Jessica Aiken, MiaGarcia-Hills, Sheelah Grace Murthy, andAmy Rigg, Mon 3/6-Thu 4/6. EReceptionThu 3/9, 3-7 PM. Mon-Fri 8:30-5. 312-413-5180
UIC Ward Gallery Student Center East,750 S. Halsted. Work by Anna Holm, Mon3/6-Thu 4/6. Mon-Thu 11-8, Fri 11-5. 312-413-5070
Vespine 1907 S. Halsted. Michael Goro,prints, through Sun 3/26. Fri 4-9, Sat 10-4.312-962-5850
Vonzweck 1626 N. Humboldt. JennyWalters, videos, through Thu 3/30. Thu 6-9.773-208-7222
Walsh 118 N. Peoria. Group show of workaddressing architecture and urbanity,through Sat 3/11. Tue-Sat 10:30-5:30. 312-829-3312
Linda Warren 1052 W. Fulton. Joshua J.Van Wie, photos, through Fri 3/17. Tue-Sat11-5. 312-432-9500
Western Exhibitions 1648 W. Kinzie, 2ndfl. Mark Wagner, collages and booksmade from dollar bills and clothing tags;The Buddy Cycles, Volume 1, video byDerek Fansler and Scott Wolniak featur-ing the artists as marionettes; artists’books by gallery artists, Sat 3/4-Sat 4/8.EOpens Sat 3/4, 6-9 PM. Wed-Sat noon-6. 312-307-4685
Woman Made 685 N. Milwaukee.Annual invitational exhibit; art bygallery volunteers; group show of masks, through Thu 3/30. EReception Fri 3/3, 6-9 PM. Wed-Fri noon-7, Sat-Sunnoon-4. 312-738-0400
Donald Young 933 W. Washington. Gary Hill, video installations, through Fri 4/14. Tue-Fri 10-5:30, Sat 11-5:30. 312-455-0100
Zg 300 W. Superior. Beth Reitmeyer, paint-ings and an evolving installation, throughSat 3/11. Tue-Sat 10-5:30. 312-654-9900
Zolla/Lieberman 325 W. Huron. Stephen DeStaebler, ceramic sculpture;
Cheonae Kim, paintings, through Sat3/25. Tue-Fri 10-5:30, Sat 11-5:30. 312-944-1990
Suburban
Art Center 1957 Sheridan, Highland Park.Work by local artists of Mexican descent,through Tue 3/28. EOpens Fri 3/3, 6:30-8PM. Mon-Sat 9-5. 847-432-1888
College of Lake County Wright Gallery19351 Washington, Grayslake. EleanorSpiess-Ferris, paintings, through Sun 4/9.EOpens Fri 3/3, 7-9 PM. Mon-Thu 8 AM-9PM, Fri-Sat 9-4:30. 847-443-2240
Elmhurst College Founders LoungeFrick Center, 190 Prospect, Elmhurst.Sandra Perlow, paintings, through Wed3/29. EReception Tue 3/7, 4:30-6:30 PM,with a talk by Perlow at 5 PM. Mon-Fri 8AM-midnight, Sun noon-midnight. 630-617-3033
Evanston Art Center 2603 Sheridan,Evanston. “Flattened,” work by fiveartists, some “literally coming off of thewall or up from the floor,” through Sun4/2. Mon-Thu 10-10, Fri-Sat 10-4, Sun 1-4.847-475-5300
Lake Forest College SonnenscheinGallery Durand Art Institute, 555 N.Sheridan, Lake Forest. Matthew Girson,paintings, through Sun 4/2. Daily 2:30-5.847-735-5194
Galleries & Museums
Slices of Light
tal photos—fields, gardens, people shopping. I viewedthis as gathering visual data. I think I was alreadymaking the decision to become an artist again.” Hestarted playing with the images on his computer: hecut a pixel-high slice from one photo and “extruded”it, turning each pixel into a vertical line. Its mix ofregularity and irregularity seemed to reflect both thedigital and natural worlds.
But the images remained in his computer until2002, when the company Betts was working for wassold and he returned to Houston to make art.Tackling the problem of translating his extruded
images to paint, he designed and built a computer-controlled machine that applies paint with miniaturerollers, permitting lines as thin as 1/100th of an inch.Once he had a body of work that satisfied him, hestarted looking for galleries to represent him. Havingworked in sales, he knew that “you have to make coldcalls. Some artists say, ‘I can’t deal with rejection.’ ButI know it’s a numbers game. Being rejected is posi-tive, because if ten people reject me I’m closer toacceptance.” He approached more than 100 New Yorkgalleries over eight months before finding one, and henow has galleries in eight cities. —Fred Camper
Now Showing
Myth of Insight
W illiam Betts’s ten paintings at Peter Millerwere made by machine using pixel-highslices he chose from his digital photographs.
In most cases he began with images of nature. “I’mattracted to gardens—to the formality of their inter-section between man and nature,” he says. Thresholdand Bird’s Eye View were made from photos of thesame irrigated field in France “taken at differenttimes of day so you have different kinds of light.”Myth of Insight comes from a shot of a Japanesemaple in autumn. End of Certainty comes from “thisgrove of beautiful cherry trees blossoming in thespring in Copenhagen, a wonderful combination ofbudding green and little pink flowers and eggshellblue sky.” Viewed from different positions, the paint-ings change: lines visible up close sometimes blend,pointillism style, from afar.
Betts first remembers looking carefully at thingsat age six or seven. As a boy living in New York Cityhe drew cutaways of submarines, trying to under-stand how they worked. His architect father, whodesigned modernist homes, had blueprints and mod-els in their house and also collected art: Calder,Kline, Tinguely, Albers. Betts’s mom was a photogra-pher, and he began taking photos at ten. By his earlyteens he was “interested in surfaces and was pho-tographing lawns, walls, fences, sides of buildings.”He also did some subway graffiti, and on a trip to theBahamas one summer made drawings of palmtrees—and sold them there.
Having dropped out of Hampshire College afterone semester, Betts started frequenting Studio 54during the club’s heyday. “Here was this incredible
amplified visual andauditory sensation.There was always some-thing to look at, some-body’s costume, a cre-ative energy, a sexualenergy.” After several
years in Manhattan he moved to Arizona and starteda small company marketing natural gas. He was alsopainting abstractions at the time but felt that if hewas going to continue painting he needed to “devel-op a point of view.” He returned to college, graduat-ing from Arizona State in 1991 with an art degree,but found that the paintings he’d been making basedon aerial landscape photos failed to interest galleriesin Scottsdale. Though he continued to paint for sev-eral years, he took a series of technology jobs inHouston and eventually got too busy.
Then in 2001, Betts’s job began to require travelthroughout Europe. “The U.S. has become a fairlyhomogenized place,” he says. “I’ll see many of thesame things on a street corner in Houston that I’ll seein Chicago. When I spent a Friday in Milan and thenthe weekend in Provence, the things that I would seewould be very different. I started taking tons of digi-
William BettsWHEN Through Sat 3/11WHERE Peter Miller, 118 N. PeoriaINFO 312-951-1700
Painting from the “Moon Series” by Jenine Clevenger, whose show opens Friday at Thomas Masters
William Betts • Rio de Janeiro
William Betts
Copacabana Beach II
2009
acrylic drops on canvas
36 x 48 inches
91.4 x 121.9 cm
$6,500$6,500
March 26, 2009Contact: Viviette Hunt, Gallery Director, (505) 766-9888
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEWilliam BettsSimpatia é Quase AmorApril 10 – June 5
Richard Levy Gallery is pleased to present Simpatia é Quase Amor(friendliness is almost love), an exhibition of conceptual landscape paintings byHouston based painter William Betts. This exhibition runs from April10th – June 5th with an artist reception on June 5th from 6 –8 pm.
The series Simpatia é Quase Amor is a study in contradictions. WilliamBetts chose Rio de Janeiro as ideal site for his examination of contemporarysocial issues. As the subject of songs, films and endless travel images Rio deJaneiro is an iconic reference of the exotic escape. Betts was influenced as achild by Pan Am travel posters, which promoted this city as a magicaldestination. This perception is a stark contrast to the reality of a metropolisteeming with overwhelming social problems including a rampant drug trade,violence, and one of the world's highest incidents of HIV. As a study incontrasts, Rio is dangerous and extremely poor while simultaneously home tosome of the world's wealthiest individuals and an enticing destination on theglobal party circuit.
The aerial perspective in each painting allows Betts to preserve the romanticaspect, using a point of view typically reserved for the elite recreational ortechnical, geographic, and demographic examination. An initial glance conjuresfantasy, offering an abstracted and exquisite view of an exotic location. Sparklingwaters, exotic beaches, and majestic mountains are juxtaposed with any urbandelight that one could possibly desire. Upon closer inspection, the paintings alsoinclude the slums and barrios –depicting the under belly with the same exquisitecare. This contrast underscores the many contradictions that envelop Rio deJaneiro.
Simpatia é Quase Amor has been in the making since 2007. What started asa project on social inequity quickly took on a personal aspect when a group ofmen armed with machine guns ambushed the artist and his wife during one oftheir trips to Rio. Fortunately they exited the situation unharmed and onlystripped of a few objects of material value. Rio has always captured Betts'imagination for its visual splendor. Simpatia é Quase Amor is a reconciliationof this beauty with the street level reality.
For additional information or images, please contact the gallery at (505)766.9888. Images from this exhibition are available on our website:www.levygallery.com
Dates: April 10 – June 5Reception: Friday, June 5th, 6 – 8 pmGallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 – 4 PM and by appointmentContact: 505.766.9888, [email protected]
William Betts • Rio de Janeiro
William Betts
Copacabana I
Copacabana II
2009
acrylic drops on canvas
16 x 24 inches
40.6 x 61 cm40.6 x 61 cm
$3,500 each
William Betts • Rio de Janeiro
William Betts
Favela, Rio de Janeiro
2009
acrylic drops on canvas
48 x 72 inches
121.9 x 182.9 cm
$9,500 $9,500
William Betts • Rio de Janeiro
William Betts
Copacabana V
2009
acrylic drops on canvas
48 x 72 inches
121.9 x 182.9 cm
$9,500 $9,500
William Betts • Rio de Janeiro
William Betts
Sugarloaf, Rio de Janeiro
2009
acrylic drops on canvas
16 x 24 inches
40.6 x 61 cm
$3,500 $3,500
William Betts • Rio de Janeiro
details
William Betts
Ipanema
2009
acrylic drops on canvas
60 x 160 inches
152.4 x 406.4 cm
$36,000 $36,000
William Betts
Education1991 Arizona State University, Bachelor of Arts, Studio Art, Cum Laude, Tempe, AZ
Solo Exhibitions2010 Jennifer Kostuik Gallery, Vancouver, BC
Holly Johnson Gallery, Dallas, TXMargaret Thatcher Projects, New York, NY
2009 Simpatia é Quase Amor, Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque, NM2008 Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX
Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago, IL2007 Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York, NY
View from the Panopticon, Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque, NMDevin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TXHolly Johnson Gallery, Dallas, TXKostuick Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada
2006 Anne Reed Gallery, Sun Valley, IDPeter Miller Gallery, Chicago, IL
2005 Bentley Projects, Phoenix, AZTexas State University, San Marcos, TXGallery deSoto, Los Angeles, CAHolly Johnson Gallery, Dallas, TXPlus Gallery, Denver, CO
2004 Poissant Gallery, Houston, TX
Group Exhibitions2010 Mechanistic: William Betts, Ron Laboray, Relja Penzic, Peter Miller Gallery
Ltd., Chicago, IL 2008 Pixelated, Winston Wächter Fine Art, New York, NY
New American talent 23, Arthouse, Austin, TXInvisible Omniscience: Seeing and the Seen, Baltimore Art Place, Baltimore, MDGroup Show, Trinity University, San Antonio, TXHouston Area Show, Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, TXGroup Show, John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WIAssistance League Celebrates Texas Art 2008, Dr. Salatino, LACMA juror,Houston, TXThe Sky is Falling, Spur Projects, Portolo Valley, CAGroup Show, Spur Projects, Portola Valley, CA
2007 Collector’s Gallery, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NYChill, Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York, NYTexas Biennial, Austin, TXVertigo, Plus Gallery, Denver, COFab Ab, Salt Lake City Art Center, Salt Lake City, UTLos Americanos, Arcaute Arte Contemporaneo, Monterrey,Mexico
B & W, Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX2006 New Houston Painting, Blue Star, San Antonio, TX
Texas Paint, Part Two: Abstraction, Arlington Museum of Art, TXBiennial Southwest, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NMOPENDraw, OPENSOURCE Art, Champaign, IL2006 Works on Paper National Competition, Long Beach, NJSummer Group Show, Anne Reed Gallery, Sun Valley, ID5 Angles on Abstraction, Addison Arts, Santa Fe, NMRipped from the Pages, Gallery 125, CACHH, Houston, TXRed Dot, Blue Star, San Antonio, TXBlurring the Line, University of Texas San Antonio, TXAssistance League of Houston Celebrates Texas Art, Houston, TXWatch it! Television’s Influence in Art, State University of NewYork, Stony Brook, NY
2005 Gallery Artists, Addison Arts, Santa Fe, NMSelections from New American Painting, Plus Gallery, Denver, CONew Texas Painting, Diverseworks, Houston, TXClothesline Exhibition, the Hospital, Covent Garden, LondonThree Landscape Painters, Morgan Lehman Gallery, Lakeville, CTSummer Group Show, Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, AZInaugural Group Exhibition, Holly Johnson Gallery, Dallas, TXIncremental Disruption, NAO Gallery, Boston, MA20th Annual International Exhibition, University of Texas, Tyler, TXTexas Biennial, Austin, TXAssistance League of Houston Celebrates Texas Art, Houston, TX
DPI:2004 Competition, Kellogg University Art GalleryCal Poly, Pomona, CAGensler Architects Rotating Artist Program, Houston, TXSizzle, Diverseworks, Houston, TXThe Big Show, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TXWilliam Betts and Kay Nguyen, Poissant O’Neal Gallery, Houston, TX
Awards2008 Finalist, 2008 Hunting Prize2008 First Place, Assistance League of Houston Celebrates Texas Art,
Dr. Kevin Salatino, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jurorand Curator
2007 Finalist, Hunting Art Prize2006 Best in Show, Biennial Southwest, Albuquerque Museum of Art and
History, Albuquerque NM, Neal Benezra, Director of the San FranciscoMuseum of Modern Art juror
2006 Third Place Prize, Assistance League of Houston Celebrates TexasArt, Jeffrey D. Grove, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art,High Museum of Art Atlanta Juror
2006 Individual Artist Grant, Cultural Arts Council of Houston and Harris County2005 Third Place Prize, Assistance League of Houston Celebrates
May 9, 2006, 4:24PM
William Betts makes art -- and a profitBy BILL DAVENPORTFor the Chronicle
William Betts sounds like any successful businessman with a start-up. He invented a"digitally controlled paint application process" that he uses to manufacture "high-endluxury products." Sales are strong, and he's continually refining his process, products andmarketing strategy. He worries about his brand.
The thing is, Betts' business is art. And artists don't usually talk like that.
Betts — who's traded natural gas, sold real estate and marketed software — learned hisapproach from the business world. It's a startling contrast to the idealistic, impracticalnon-approach of most artists, but for Betts it's just common sense.
His paintings are just as surprising. He creates them notwith a brush, but with a special computer-controlledpainting machine. Described as products, they can soundlike chilly technical exercises, knocked out with an eyetoward making money. But Betts has the heart of anartist; the paintings are unreasonably complex, toocarefully orchestrated to be sensible in a strictly businesssense. Betts, whose art often concerns sharply drawnlines, inhabits a fuzzy gray area, a new-feeling space thatlies somewhere between art, business and high-tech.
Tall and stringy, Betts moves with a restless intensity around the neat, white-walledstudio atop his glass-and-metal house in the stylish West End. Touches of gray at histemples seem at odds with his rock 'n' roll uniform: blue jeans, white T-shirt, blacksneakers.
He looks like a former rocker, and he is. Born in New York in the '60s, he submergedhimself in the New York nightlife instead of going directly to college. He worked ingalleries, he says, and lived "in a gross little walk-up." The scene's famous hedonism tookits toll, and by 1984 the party was over.
According to Betts, drugs and clubbing were literally killing him. ''My family intervenedand saved my life," he explains.
William Betts looks for a bottle of paintin his studio.Bill Olive: For the Chronicle
continued
He escaped New York for Phoenix, to exploreopportunities in the gas marketing industry, hisgrandfather's business. Newly deregulated, the field waswide-open. His partner, a high-school friend, bought thegas; Betts signed up industrial end users in California.
They had some luck, and sold out to a bigger player a year and a half later.
Betts then took a job selling new homes in the desert, helping a California builder cleanup a failed project. "It was hard-core sales," sighs Betts, but "until you have college, youroptions are limited."
With the homes sold and money saved, Betts finally got the education he yearned for,earning a B.A. in studio art from Arizona State University in 1991. Art was a naturalchoice. His father was an architect and art collector; his mother, a photographer. In Betts'high-powered family, he says, "there was always the impression that being an artist wasno different than being an architect, a doctor, or a lawyer."
He and his sisters were driven to succeed. Kate, two years younger, is now the editor ofTime Style&Design; Elizabeth, four years older, is art director at Us Weekly.
But it took William awhile to find his calling. In his senior year, driving throughOklahoma, Betts took a photograph many will recognize. "It was the most banal pictureyou can imagine," he says. "Edge of highway, yellow line, some scrub grass, field,horizon, blue sky. I painted it by hand. As I started playing with digital in '96, I foundthat there was an elasticity to these images. You could slice it and stretch it, and it wasthe same. It didn't change."
He carried that stretched landscape in his head for years as, out of college, he once againset his art aside for business.
His gas-marketing connections got him a job with Panhandle Eastern in Houston. Whenthe company spun off a technology group as a software business, Betts went along. Moretime passed, and Betts changed companies and cities. In 2001 he was a softwaremarketing executive in London.
"Business was taking its toll on me," he says. "It wasn't me. I felt like I wascompromising myself." When his company was bought and reorganized, he took aseverance package and decided to make a career in the art world.
Betts at his studio computer. Bill Olive:For the Chronicle
continued
His wife, Yvonne, worked for the same company. She stayed on, and together theytransferred back to Houston.
Betts was determined to do his career right this time. "I'm lucky," he says, '"because allthe mistakes I've made have been in other places and other times and in other fields."
Betts insisted that art pay its own way. He points to one of his medium-size paintings,priced at $4,800, on the studio wall: "There's no way, just looking at it purely oneconomics, that if I'm selling that painting for a thousand bucks that I'm going to make aliving. So then what happens is you take another job, and that job starts to bleed awaytime, and the work suffers."
He experimented with his digitally stretched photos, seeking a paint-applicationtechnique as precise as the digital data he wanted to represent. He attached paintings to arotating drum like a wood lathe, but the drums wobbled.
The turning point came when he invested $8,000 in a computer-controlled industrialrobot. The machine looks like a large flat table with heavy steel rails along its sides.Another steel beam rides these rails, spanning the table's surface. The machine's headcrawls along this beam on a cogged track, allowing Betts to place the head at very preciselocations anywhere on the table.
All this is off-the-shelf equipment more often found in industry than in an artist's studio.Betts' baby, what he calls his ''secret sauce," is an attachment for the machine that makesvery narrow, razor-sharp lines of acrylic enamel.
The last link in Betts' direct digital-image-to-painting technique is the custom-madesoftware that controls the machine. Like a medieval master craftsman, Betts guards thedetails of his process. He hasn't patented them, and doesn't plan to. Secrecy, he figures, isbetter security.
The line paintings Betts creates with this set-up, representing a total investment around$20,000, are striking. Cascades of impossibly narrow stripes in vivid constellations ofcolor seem to fluctuate forward and backward in space, with a tightly controlled energythat perfectly mirrors Betts' personality. They combine the precision of computergraphics with the physicality and intense color possible only with paint.
It's self-evident that the paintings are machine-made, as is the fact that they're painted.The contradiction arouses viewers' curiosity and consternation. Are they prints?Paintings? Sculptures? How did he do that?
continuedHe produces the paintings in sizes ranging from typing paper to mural, with prices from$1,000 to $8,000. Sometimes he makes them in editions — that is, a limited number ofexact copies, something usually impossible for paintings. The very existence of Betts'work assaults a nest of assumptions about what paintings are supposed to be.
Good artists are often fanatics about their work, but Betts extends the same extreme, self-conscious control to his marketing strategy. He began by making 16 paintings. ''I realizedthat it was really important to have a full body of work," he says. ''Sixteen paintingsseemed like a good number. It's not a complete slide set, but it's most of the sheet." Heshowed them to Meg Poissant, and in 2004 he had his first solo show at Poissant Galleryin Houston.
In an intense, nationwide marketing blitz, he contacted more than 100 galleries and nettedhimself four more shows. Contacts through art fairs got him two more. To produce the 60paintings he needed for his six solo shows in 2005, he bought a faster machine.
Betts says his business plan is working. "So now I've got the galleries out there. I've gotthe throughput. I've got the process down, so I can cut back supply. I used to do a lotmore editions. Now I've cut those off."
He shows in galleries elsewhere, but represents himself in Houston. "Part of the reason Idon't have a gallery here is because I felt like I have to control my brand," he says. "Iwatch my Web traffic like a hawk. I can watch what images people react to. It's likeputting a survey on every piece of art."
He's as open about his marketing techniques as he is secretive about his process. "It's nota manipulation; it's just managing," he says matter-of-factly. "What I'm doing is notrocket science. A real marketing person would come in here and just shred me."
As for the convergence of art and business, he quips, "I'm pretty comfortable leveragingthe capitalist system."
Bill Davenport is a Houston artist. You can reach him at [email protected].