Betsy Campen Tropical Realism Art Gallery, St. Croix, USVI

Betsy Campen's Tropical Realism Art Gallery, 5012 Gallows Bay St. Croix, VI 00820 Tel: 340-719-2246

Inspired by the colorful flowers blooming only two weeks after Hurricane Hugo struck St. Croix in 1989, Artist Betsy Campen decided to devote herself full time to her painting. “When I left Richmond, Virginia, I was just a Sunday painter,” she says. “But, after Hurricane Hugo, I found it was a lot easier to push a paint brush than a wheelbarrow.” To this day, Betsy continues to paint eight hours a day, every day.

For the past several years, Campen has concentrated her artistic efforts on paintings of St. Croix’s well-known structures including Government House, the Frederiksted Apothecary, the waterfront in Christiansted and many others. “I can’t get enough of St. Croix,” she adds. And demonstrating her fine sense of humor as well as her artistic spirit, she has ‘captured in time’ scenes as diverse as her “View of WAPA” (from the fort) and the old “Baron Spot Bar”.

Her work could be classified as photo realism, and she works in oils and watercolor. Her paintings do not show brush strokes. Betsy works strictly from photography to gather information. Her heroes are the photo realists Jack Beale, Helen Frankenthaler, and Chuck Close.

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May not be used or reproduced without the express permission of the artist.