Bette Ridgeway_Artist Page
Bette Ridgeway
Bette Ridgeway, An Awakening, 2024, Acrylics on Canvas, 58” x 54”, Price upon request
"Bette Ridgeway is one of a very few whose works stand with and up to the standards of greatness set by Morris Louis and Charles Schucker who developed the poured paint style of painting in the late 1930's"
-Walter Wickiser, New York, 2025
“My paintings are a spontaneous occurrence, born out of the experience, but maturing reflexively in the process of creation. My technique is controlled improvisation. Gravity is my medium. Images are caught with intent.”
Celebrated for her large-scale, luminous poured canvases, Bette Ridgeway has devoted five decades to developing her unusual pouring technique, garnering international recognition in the process.
Her mentor Paul Jenkins (1923-2012), the acclaimed Abstract Expressionist, encouraged the artist in 1979 to work large, eliminate subject matter and focus on color, space and time. Ridgeway followed his advice and has developed and refined her signature technique. “Color is my subject and my muse,” says Ridgeway. Located in Santa Fe, New Mexico since the mid-1990s, Ridgeway is represented by numerous galleries and has been shown in over 80 gallery and museum exhibitions internationally, including a concomitant juried exhibition at the 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. Her work is included in many public and private collections.
Her recent awards include the 2024 Leonardo DaVinci International Prize, the Caravaggio International Prize 2022, the Michelangelo International Prize 2021 and “Top 60 Contemporary Masters 2017” by Art Tour International Magazine. In addition, she won the Oxford University Alumni Prize at the “Art of the Mind” exhibition at the Chianciano Art Museum in Tuscany, Italy in 2012. She has been published in noteworthy art journals and catalogues such as Monk Magazine, United Kingdom; LandEscape Art Review Special Edition, London, UK; and the inaugural edition of the London Art Biennale 2013, London, UK.