Bettina Dickson Rusher

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Bettina has an innate need to create. Bettina is an abstract expressionist painter. She has lived and worked in Central Kentucky, Virginia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. She now resides on Saint Simons Island in Georgia.

Bettina received a BA in Art from Eastern Kentucky University in 1984. Her education at EKU included a double major in Art and Interior Design and a minor in Business. She continued her art education in San Francisco from 1991- 1994 at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her continuing education classes included drawing, advanced painting and art history.

Bettina loves the journey of the artistic process. She begins most canvases with layers of color that are improvised, abstract and even chaotic. Through a process of addition and subtraction Bettina brings each painting closer to balance with sensitivity and attention to detail. In her process, she tries to look for the good in what she thinks are mistakes. Bettina says, “I will let them be for a time to see if they can become an interesting component. Much of the time with a little editing they can become a nice surprise”. Bettina strives to create some amount of push / pull plus lost and found in her edges. Bettina’s edges can appear muted where color overlaps and the underlying mark may remain slightly visible. She also has concerns for brushwork and mark making which she uses a variety of tools to create. This can affect the mood, movement, and energy of the piece. Bettina says, “Sometimes my process is full of trials and tribulations and often the work goes through construction to destruction and back again and finally to a feeling of resolve.”

Bettina’s paintings vary in style from exploring abstract shape relationships, to gestures and action, to a mixture of the two. Her subject matter is always drawn from an emotion, the natural world or something inspirational in her life. She prefers to work in oil paint and sticks, mixed media, and uses some of her photography for reference.

Bettina believes that if her work provokes emotion and / or introspective thought for the beholder then she has done her job well. 

Bettina’s art can be found in private collections in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia. Her institutional clients include Oracle Corporation in San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle Washington, and The University of Kentucky in Lexington Kentucky.

Bettina welcomes the opportunity to design and implement commissioned pieces.