Born in California in 1966, Fred Betz grew up in New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland.  He studied painting as an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Cruz and at Yale School of Art and Music at Norfolk, Connecticut.  He received his M.F.A. at Columbia University in New York City in 1993. 

Mr. Betz has painted en plein air landscapes his entire career.  In landscape painting, it is the challenge of chasing reality that captivates the painter.  When painting en plein air, light and weather shift rapidly.  Nature takes forms and colors that are often quite subtle and complex.  All of this requires the heightened attention, intuition, resourcefulness and agility of the painter.  Mr. Betz seeks to capture the quality of light and complexity of form that he sees along with the beauty and feeling of the place, ultimately arriving at a canvas with visual impact and conviction.  Painting the landscape directly from observation [en plein air] is perhaps one of the purer, most intensified forms of painting and demands an artist’s best.

Mr. Betz has been a painter for more than 25 years.  In that time, he has lived in England, Prague, Rome, and New York City.  After a three year circuit of landscape painting from Santa Barbara, California to Vancouver, British Columbia, Mr. Betz settled in Seattle, Washington in 2005.  He maintains a studio in the historic Ballard area of Seattle.  In addition to his painting career, Mr. Betz races competitively on the sailboat Different Drummer.

Galeria 19 Fine Art in Fredericksburg, Texas is Mr. Betz's exclusive representative in Texas.

Works