Finding beauty close to home
Bethany Fields, The Field is Calling, pastel, 12 x 16.
This story was featured in the August 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
AMARILLO MAY be the largest city in the Texas Panhandle, but with its wide-open plains, sprawling cattle ranches, and vast blue skies, it’s a quintessential western town. “Amarillo means yellow in Spanish,” says pastel artist Bethany Fields, a seventh-generation Texan. “We are surrounded by wheat fields and grassland for miles and miles.” As a teenager, Fields dreamed about one day escaping the flat landscape of her homeland for greener pastures. “There’s this harsh beauty to it,” she says. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve discovered how this land forces you to look hard. It’s forced me to slow down and paint this area.”
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- Bethany Fields, Desert Rhapsody, pastel, 12 x 9.
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- Bethany Fields, Palo Duro Dreams, pastel, 16 x 12.
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- Bethany Fields, Marsh Reverie, pastel, 10 x 10.
Fields, who received Master Circle status with the International Association of Pastel Societies last year, admits it took some time before she became attuned to just how much color really exists in the Panhandle. There was a time, for example, when she avoided painting scenes of Palo Duro Canyon State Park—a local treasure where Georgia O’Keeffe once painted, and now one of Fields’ favorite subjects—because of its dominant ocher hues. “I didn’t like the color orange,” explains the artist. “But then I realized there’s much more purple and blue and gorgeous mauves.” Even the local grasses “are not just yellow,” she adds. “They are purple and sage-green and filled with prairie flowers.”
With a professional background in both theater and photography, Fields has an acute eye for lighting, composition, and design that informs her work as a painter today. Though she keeps her plein-air excursions to a minimum to avoid adverse encounters with the area’s rattlesnakes, tarantulas, and fierce winds, her creative process always begins with walks in nature, where she explores and photographs the landscape. Back in her studio, “I paint quickly,” says the artist. “Pastels allow me to be immediate and responsive to shapes and the light.”
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- Bethany Fields, Off Trail, pastel, 14 x 11.
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- Bethany Fields, On the Rim, pastel, 11 x 14.
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- Bethany Fields, Towards Fortress Cliff, pastel, 12 x 16.
Fields’ style itself, representational but painterly, suits the quiet, evocative scenes she often portrays. The cactus-studded plains of the Llano Estacado, meandering trails through Palo Duro Canyon, and sweeping views from its rim have all inspired Fields’ pastel works. “There’s a reminiscent quality to some of my pieces,” she says. “Some of my paintings are almost like memories of walks with my family, showing people that—if you just slow down and listen to the crickets and the grasses, and watch the storms roll in across the field—it’s breathtaking.”
representation
www.bethanyfields.com
This story was featured in the August 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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