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Editor’s note: This Q&A with Bethany Peck is the third in our series at WestfordCAT on Women Empowered by Art. Here, WestfordCat intern, Jesena Kalabokis, interviews her mother, artist Bethany Peck. Kalabokis is a junior at Innovation Academy in Tyngsborough.
By Jesena Kalabokis
How did you find your passion in art?
“I owe a lot of it to my mom. She has always been really supportive of me drawing and painting. She was always buying lots of art supplies, so there was always glitter, and paints, and crayons, and lots of paper. I was always drawing, and just being creative. She signed me up for private art lessons, so I studied with a local artist named Bob Glabowski and learned how to paint and draw from him. I also took art classes in school, and really enjoyed those, and would get a lot of praise from my teacher which was always great. It helped build my confidence as an artist.”
Can you tell me about the type of art you create?
“I consider myself a contemporary abstract landscape painter, and I enjoy making very expressive landscape and seascape type paintings.”
How do you express yourself through your art?
“I consider my art to be intuitive. When I create a painting, there’s not a lot of planning, it just spontaneously happens. I’ll go to the studio, and I might be feeling a certain color, and I’ll start making a painting based off of whatever colors I’m feeling. Generally, if I’m feeling really happy, I might have a lot of bright, cheerful colors, or for example, in the winter months, things are really dark and dreary, so I tend to have a lot of gray or very dark indigo type paintings. A lot of it depends on how I’m feeling and I just put my emotions into my paintings.”
How has the pandemic affected your art, and what is it like being an artist during this time?
“It’s interesting. With the pandemic, there’s been some blessings and some obvious challenges. Financially, it can be challenging because the galleries that my art hangs in have been closed, so the public doesn’t get to see my art as much. One of the blessings has been that with everything being closed down, it’s given me the opportunity to have more time to work on my art. I get to experiment, and try things out that I might not have tried out before.
What has your experience as a woman in the arts been like?
“I think there’s definitely some differences between how women artists are perceived and their male counterparts. Generally, I feel like the men tend to get a few more accolades. So if a man created a painting, he might get more credit, or be held to a higher esteem than a woman painter who is doing something similar. I also find that women tend to support each other, but unfortunately they can also sometimes be very competitive. The women painters can kind of undercut each other or be very competitive while a man who is doing something very similar will just be left alone.”
Can you tell me about how being a mom has impacted your career in the arts?
“Taking care of children and trying to juggle with making art, sometimes you feel like you’re being selfish because you want to be taking care of your family, and yet at the same time you need to be working on your art. So there’s this balancing act of trying to take care of the kids, take care of my family obligations, and painting. But I feel like the painting part of my life helps me to be a better mom, because I go to the studio and I put all of my emotions and work out the day through my art. Then I go home and feel like I’ve had this cathartic release and feel ready to be with the family, and enjoy them. I think even though it can be challenging with time management, that it’s actually helped me be a better mother.”
Do you have any advice for young girls interested in pursuing art?
“Don’t give up. You’re going to have roadblocks, things are going to happen, but just stick with it. Whatever medium it is, drawing, painting, acting, singing, whatever kind of art form: practice, practice, practice. The more you practice, the better you’ll get, and your art will start speaking to other people who embrace and support what you do. There may be people who you might not be their cup of tea, and that’s okay, your art isn’t going to be for everybody. But as long as you’re making it for yourself, and you’re practicing, and pursuing that, don’t give up and just keep going. Enjoy and have fun with it.”
