I started drawing in first grade. My parents saw something I'd made and asked, a little suspiciously, whether I'd traced it. I hadn't. That was the first time I understood I might be good at this, and I've been doing it every day since.​​​​​​
Hi, I'm Beth!
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and this is baby beth
we're both glad you're here . . .
The Path​
I went to Ringling College of Art and Design — illustration, with a concentration in visual development. The plan was Disney. I'd grown up on those movies, and I wanted to build the worlds inside them.
To pay for it, I served six years in the Air Force. I'd known since sixth grade that was how I'd get to college. I signed the paperwork the week I turned eighteen and left for boot camp a few months after graduating from high school.
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Junior year, the plan fell apart. I was spending every day in a dark room in front of a screen, not drawing, not painting, and I felt dead in it. My grades showed it. I'd always been someone who excelled, and suddenly I wasn't, and no one could tell me what to do about it.
The only class I still loved was oil painting.
So I kept showing up to that one. Senior year, I decided I wasn't going to apply anywhere. No studios, no jobs. I told my mother — who was, reasonably, terrified — that I was going to be an entrepreneur.
I didn't have a plan.
I just knew I wanted to paint . . . which led me to . . .​​
The Wall
A few slow months later, I volunteered at a mural festival in town. I figured I'd carry paint cans and hand out flyers.
I showed up on site and one of the organizers pointed at a wall and told me it was mine. The artist who was supposed to paint it had cancelled. The festival was in a week.
I said what. He said, you're a painter, aren't you?
My mom flew out and helped me buy my first set of spray cans. I designed it and painted that wall in a week, and it was the most fun I have ever had — the deadline, the sun, the music, the doing something I'd never done. I came down off that wall knowing exactly what I was going to do with my life.​
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The Work Now
I'm American, Puerto Rican, and Dominican, and most of what I make is me working out what it means to be all three at once. I paint about becoming, about the road, and about the search for home.
That last one is the real subject. I live full-time in a bus. I've painted in New Jersey, Florida, Mexico City, the Dominican Republic, and Baja. I'm headed down the Pan-American Highway eventually, and somewhere along it I'm looking for land — a place that feels like home, which is a thing I have been looking for for a long time and have not found yet.
Everything I'm feeling ends up on the canvas or the wall, whether I want it there or not. Making art is just how I deal with my life. So when people tell me a piece feels like it's about something — it is. It's about whatever I was carrying that month.
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On My Parents
They supported me with hesitancy, which I used to read as not believing in me. I understand it differently now, especially after living in Mexico and understanding what it actually is to be an immigrant. They watched me put enormous potential into something completely uncertain, and they let me do it anyway. That took more from them than it took from me.
What's Next
Baja this winter. The Pan-American after that. Somewhere in there, land — and eventually a school, because the thing I want most in the long run is to build something other people can use.
For now: walls, prints, and one original a season.
If you've got a wall, let's talk.
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If you love my art and want some in your home, check out my shop.
And if you want to ride along, you should sign up for my newsletter or check out my journal.
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