December 2011

Artists’ Guild of Spartanburg in Spartanburg, SC, Features Works by Walter Bethea

The Artists’ Guild of Spartanburg in Spartanburg, SC, will present the exhibit, The Uncovery, featuring a collection of 20 small (2” x 3”) pencil drawings on paper and eight oil/acrylic paintings on wood panels by member Walter Bethea. The exhibit will be on view in the Guild Gallery located at the Chapman Cultural Center from Dec. 3 - 21, 2011. A reception will be held on Dec. 3, from 4-8pm.

The work in The Uncovery is based on geometric shapes and compositions. Bethea allows his intuition to lead his choices of color, shape, form and pattern to create images that seem to be disguised or out of focus. He wants the viewer to be the “puzzle solver” and to “step back, get closer, to look from the left and to look from the right, to fully examine the work and to answer the inevitable question of ‘what is it?’”

“With a use of a seemingly rigid grid structure of brushstrokes, squares and organic shapes, I create illusions of space, light and form that allow the viewer to choose what experience they desire,” Bethea said.

“It’s all new work that I created in the past six months, and it’s the first body of work created since graduating college in 2005,” Bethea continues. “I’m excited about the unlimited potential of where I can take this, and expand its diversity. I enjoy the challenge and discipline that the pieces require of me and enjoying making work that causes the viewer to change their perspective.”

Bethea was born and raised in Spartanburg. He grew up surrounded by his family’s artwork that hung on the walls of his childhood homes. He graduated in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC. It was at Winthrop that he discovered his passion for art and art making. After graduating he returned home to Spartanburg and started working full time. Bethea said, “Those initial two to three years after college were not my most productive until, frustrated by artist block and insecurity, I started to just make marks on a canvas. I relished in the freedom of making a mark, then another beside it and another and then another.”

Bethea will donate 10 percent of sales from this exhibit to S.P.I.H.N., a local nonprofit organization that provides housing, job training and daycare for families in need.

For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Guild at 864/764-9568 or visit (http://artistsguildofspartanburg.com/)

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