Babb reception at Mary Patterson Gallery a success

By Melody Gustafson
EAST LIVERPOOL -- The Ohio Valley Regional Arts Council (OVRAC) held a reception Thursday night for painter and professor Elizabeth "Betsy" Babb at the Mary Patterson Gallery.


Babb said she likes the human figure to explore the abstract, as that "whole amazing bunch" of modernist painters from the 1940's and 50's did. Early modern influence runs through her work, she said, specifically van Gogh, Picasso, DuChamp and Matisse.

"It was edgy, new, but it [modernism] sort of died in the fifties. I'm trying to take it where it would have gone had it not died," she said.

Among the selections on display, some were nonrepresentational pieces. One in particular began as shadows cast on the paper where she sat and she "just went with it."

(Photos from top: Betsy Babb in front of one of her paintings; people viewing the art; Babb, seated right, talks with some women about her influences; painting, "Man with Fist"; woodcut print, "Punk." By Mike Canaday)