Jared Betts

Jared Betts earned a BFA from NSCAD University and has exhibited in over 200 exhibitions in Tokyo, Paris, New York, London, Iceland, Germany, Costa Rica, and across Canada.

Betts has received thirteen ArtsNB grants and four New Brunswick Tourism, Culture, and Heritage grants. In addition, he has taken part in several artist residencies, from the land of fire and ice in Iceland and a castle in Ireland, to spending half a year in the jungles of Costa Rica, resulting in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Costa Rica.

Jared Betts's paintings are included in numerous corporate and private collections in Paris, Toronto, Montreal, LA, China, Australia, and Iceland. Betts lives and works out of a new studio in a lush green valley between two mountains, with a river in the front yard, where he paints and gardens all day in Sussex, New Brunswick..

Artist Statement

Betts is heavily influenced by abstract expressionism, flower gardens, fairies, anime, and colours from the 80s. He admits to being drawn to Madonna’s leopard pattern fashion era and cyberpunk future retro aesthetic. His approach incorporates gestures and organic forms, working in layers while exploring tensions between recognizable forms and abstraction.

“My use of ethereal gesture and expressionist forms has since set the tone for my highly charged prismatic colour field paintings. I aim to rethink the very parameters of contemporary painting, and my work touches on many pertinent and pressing concerns around the practice of chromatic mark making, and how these relate to artistic ideals in the 21st century. My martyristic paintings inhabit the space where consciousness descends into dream, where pattern and colour expand to become an immersive sensory experience. In this celestial space, I seek to examine this dream-like suppression of recognizable imagery and capture the visceral sensations with the sublime nature of drips and the colour field. Multiple layers of tension – between the duality of conscious and subconscious surrealist automatism, flat surface, and illusory depth – propel my Aquarian desire to use visual cues as a means of stimulating ascending metaphysical sensation."

- Jared Betts, 2023

Jared Betts, CV

Jared Betts on Instagram. To view his many murals, residencies, and exhibitions, visit his website.

Watch Jennifer Pazienza's wonderful Gotta Minute? episode with Jared below: