Betty Bee

Betty Bee archives her life as part of her art practice with letters and poems from former lovers, photographs and keepsakes meticulously gathered and preserved in her personal ‘museum’, an open ongoing collection. Her work also draws from memories of an unhappy childhood, the cruelty and neglect of her father combined with sexual abuse by her brother. She mixes fantasies and desires with images of innocence, sexuality and voyeurism. Betty’s artistic resource is herself and her tragic/comic narrative is told using both traditional and non-traditional media – paintings both figurative and text-based, photographs, videoworks, performances and installations. She loves colour and often uses phosphorescent paints that glow in the dark but the pretty flowers, trees and vegetation she depicts are ‘imprisoned’ by threatening barbed wire fences and chains rendered in relief using metallic paints. She also creates paintings from texts such as pages from her diary, poems and letters from friends, which she copies on to canvas in her expressive handwriting. There is a striking contrast between the serenity and naivety of her pretty and colourful paintings of nature and mermaids with her more provocative and attention seeking photographs, video and performance works.

From “Archive of the everyday – the art of Betty Bee”,

© James Putnam, 2004

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