Gloria Betlem: Pastel Artist

It's always fun to meet and enjoy a new artist. This is Gloria Betlem's paste art reception last night at the Leesburg Center for the Arts.

Since a lot of her theme of Wild Florida revolved around birds, the center brought in many kinds of live birds and had them sitting around the room...some in cages but this bright beauty (a macaw, I think) was drinking wine out of it's owners cup and creating quite a squawk! (Not too musical). Anyway, it was a lovely catered reception with live piano music, a wine and soft drink bar and catered hot appetizers from Vic Embers here in town. Just lovely! I dream of such a show some day!!!

You can see Gloria's work on her website and under the link "Wild Florida" there are most of the paintings at the exhibit. The show will go on to Feb 10 and she is doing an "art walk" through her paintings on Feb 3 at 10 a.m. if you would like to meet her and hear about her inspiration for this series. She's also teaching a two day pastel class if you are local and you can contact her at globeing@aol.com about that.