artist spotlight
2018 Oil On Canvas
2020 Oil On Canvas
BETINA FINK Learning How to See and Be Mindful
H
by Teressa J. Hawkins
ow we look at art and how we create art is a lesson in mindfulness. We use skills of observation and focus on details. What we see is not always what others see, yet we both are drawn to the essence of the piece. Some of us have been fortunate to see the “Mona Lisa”, yet most can’t see the beauty. If we take the time to focus on the details of the painting, we can actually see the infamous smile. Tucson teaching artist Betina Fink shows her students how to “see” and be mindful. Fink has always been engaged in teaching. She became a teaching assistant at the University of Arizona and taught at the Tucson Museum of Art School, where they had an in-depth program in the arts for children and adults. She taught adults in the Drawing Studio for 20 years, eventually starting a teen program in 2001. She also developed programs for middle and high school students in Tucson as a part of the Drawing Studio’s outreach programs. Her own art journey began when she studied studio art and art history as an undergraduate. She then received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Arizona, and shortly after 28
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graduation in 1988, Fink moved to Amsterdam, where she lived and worked as an artist for seven years. “This helped form me as a mature artist and abstract painter,” she explains. “What I got from the master’s is the tradition and history of landscape painting. Some of the paintings or drawings they did are records of how things were back then.” Art was more normalized in the Netherlands, according to Fink. It wasn’t considered unusual to be an artist and it was a respectable profession. Artists were a necessary part of life. Because of the government’s fostering of the arts, the Netherlands also had a strong contemporary art environment in painting and sculpture. “I saw the kind of art that was able to be produced because artists had help from the government in some ways,” says Fink. Studio tours of the city showed the studios and artwork throughout Amsterdam, with shows often held in repurposed old buildings, such as churches, hospitals and schools. Fink’s studies of egg tempera painting and the work of the Dutch Golden Age with masters Rembrandt, Vermeer and Flemish artists grounded her studio practice. In 1992, Fink returned to the U.S. and did an “exchange show” in Tucson’s Dinnerware Gallery with a graduate school friend of hers, Joanne Kerrihard. She resided briefly at the Rancho Linda Vista artists’ community, while Kerrihard went to Amsterdam in her place to make art. A year later she decided to move back to the Ranch and remained there for almost 10 years. The work that Fink did overseas was abstract, but in Tucson, the 80 acres of rolling desert land on the Ranch became very important to her and inspired her to change her path to landscape painting. Slowly, elements of landscape crept into the work. It was rustic and gave her a new feeling of freedom Betina Fink and love of nature. Fink
