Acclaimed artist Betty Brown will be celebrating the launch of her new memoir, Pretty Much, at Fiction Addiction on Friday, August 9 from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm.
In her memoir, Betty explores her mother’s life and her own with humor, clarity, and pathos. This event is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be served. Books can be purchased online at fiction-addiction.com, at the store, or by calling Fiction Addiction at 864-675-0540.
In Pretty Much, the story covers more than a century from Clara’s birth to daughter Betty’s life today. Clara’s boundless energy wasted into frivolity in an era when expectations hemmed her into a life too small to hold her. The prospects for women and what it means to exercise independence have changed a lot over one hundred years, but the struggles of mother and daughter are timeless. Betty Bell Brown explores her mother’s life and her own with humor, clarity, and pathos.
Betty Brown is a painter of people and places, attracted by subject matter that invites exploitation of color, shape, and texture. She finds inspiration at home or through travels to the Greek Islands, Portugal, France, England, Italy, Scandinavia, New Mexico and Maine.
A native of Greenville, South Carolina, she has lived in Wilmington, North Carolina since 1965. Brown began painting in 1975, studying under nationally recognized teachers including watercolor with Charles Reid, Burton Silverman, Marbury Hill Brown, Jeanne Dobie, and Alex Powers; pastels with Wolf Kahn; oil with Charles Reid, Scott Burdick, Camille Przewodek, and Charles Sovek; printmaking, life drawing and painting with instructors from Ringling School of Art and Design at Wildacres, North Carolina; book art with Dan Essig at John C. Campbell Folk School, and Julie Leonard and Susan King at Penland School of Crafts.
Betty holds degrees from Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, earning a BA with Honors in Art. She is a member of several professional organizations and is a Program Grant recipient. Betty serves on the faculty of the Cameron Art Museum School; teaches at John C. Campbell Folk School and Artists’ Week at Pawley’s Island, SC; and works area workshops and privately. Her paintings are in the permanent collection of the Louise Wells Cameron Art Museum, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and corporate and private collections.