Eleven years ago, Betsy Ashton returned to the art career that she’d abandoned in 1971, when she took a long detour into television news. Three credits shy of a master of fine arts degree in painting from The American University in Washington, DC, she was an illustrator, artist, and art teacher, who sold many pen and ink, charcoal, and acrylic portraits before creating a program in which she taught art on a local television program and was tapped to do radio reports on the emerging women’s movement. This quickly led to her reporting and anchoring radio and television news for nearly two decades, in Washington, D.C.,and later at CBS News in New York City. While covering the courts for WJLA-TV in Washington, she became the only TV reporter ever to draw her own courtroom sketches while covering trials, which aired daily on television and were exhibited at the Jane Haslem Gallery.
Betsy resumed painting in November, 2006, at the urging of renowned painter Everett Raymond
Kinstler, NA, whose workshops she attended at the National Academy School of Fine Arts and the Art
Students’ League. Her portraits are now in public and private collections throughout the United States,
Italy, and the United Kingdom, including the collection of the U.S. Embassy in London. But she stopped taking commissions from the rich and accomplished one year ago in order to paint a series of “Portraits of Immigrants.” The first exhibition, of ten of these new portraits, opens May 17th in New York City as part of the Long Island City Arts Open Festival. The first full exhibition of all 18 Portraits of Immigrants will open in Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue next January, and then the exhibition is going on the road.
Learn more about the exhibit on Betsy’s website: www.ashtonportraits.com
Portraits of Immigrants, is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Portraits of Immigrants must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Many churches and other venues around the country would like to host this exhibit, but many cannot afford the transportation costs. If you would like to help get this exhibit out to where it can change the hearts and minds of people who hear only negative things about today’s immigrants, please consider making a donation by clicking here, or by writing a check made out to Fractured Atlas and mailing it to:
The Ashton Studio
P.O. Box 8013
L.I.C., NY 11101-8013.
