Betty Ba, also known as Brigitte Bosch.
Betty Ba wanted to pursue a career in art from an early age. But there were detours. She studied history in her native Hamburg and helped to build an innovative school as a reform pedagogue, co-founder, and headmistress. The Ida-Ehre-Schule in Bad Oldesloe, which focuses on art, music, and theatre, was awarded the school prize as the best school in the state of Schleswig-Holstein in 2014. In addition to history and German, art and drama, the artist also taught formats in which the genres complemented each other. The resulting creative potential was impressing, and this experience has accompanied her artistic work. Betty Ba has dedicated herself to painting watercolors since the 1990s. She ran her own gallery ‘unikat’ in Reinfeld, where she offered various artists a platform in an attractive location between Hamburg and Lübeck. Her small house in the Ariège in France also served a well visited gallery.
At the turn of the millennium, Betty Ba switched artistically to oil and acrylic painting and began to experiment more and more with the way she applied color and the materials she used. She embarked on the path to abstraction under the guidance of the now deceased Lübeck artist Gerhard Backshat. She also deepened her knowledge of composition, devoting herself to forms and the creative power of color. The artist searched for the essence of things. Her analyses went into depth in her exploration of the element of water, to which Betty Ba feels connected. From glittering light, movement, and dynamism to the abysmal and threatening, she turned to the subject, also due to a memory of a situation on the high seas in which she had to shout ‘Mayday, Mayday’. The visualization of underwater currents by hardening liquefied plastic together with the Dutch group Precious Plastic (https://www.preciousplastic.com/) at the Lübeck Overbeck Gesellschaft in 2020 marked its preliminary climax. Basic themes of human existence also determine the works, which arise from inner experience. Always in search of something new, the experimental process becomes the core of artistic expression, which can incorporate vibrations. This can be wild and dynamic or sometimes delicate.
A selection of past exhibitions: In Lübeck, the newly built Technology Centre was opened in 1995 with the artist's watercolors. In 1996, a very successful exhibition entitled ‘For Two’ was held at the ‘Alte Schule’ cultural centre in Reinfeld. In 2010, Betty Ba took part in the ‘Petit Montmatre’ art market in the medieval town of Mirepoix in France. In 2022, there was a solo exhibition entitled ‘Höhenflug der Farben’ at the ‘Kulturkonsum’ in the small art-loving town of Loitz, locatet in Pommerania. The artist enjoyed great popularity and interest.
Since her retirement, her artistic creativity has increased and Betty Ba has published poetry as a blogger and a historical novel ‘Im Irgendwo der Jahre’, which tells the story of the first quarter of the last century. His musical-literary presentation at the Leipzig Book Fair with the ‘Trio Nidâs’ in 2020 fell victim to the coronavirus lockdown. A large solo exhibition entitled ‘Fallen into the color pot and stirred with words...’ at the ‘Hans-Ralfs-Haus für Kunst und Kultur’ in Neustadt/Holstein also had to close a few days after opening. The artist used the corona period to attend a workshop of several weeks at the “Drehbuch-Campus Nord-Ost” with Professor Jens Becker, director, author, and dramaturge, who teaches at the Film University Babelsberg in Berlin, on the technique of screenwriting and questions of dramaturgy. This led to regular, stimulating meetings with mostly younger filmmakers to discuss film projects in the ‘Logline Unit’ in Rostock. Betty Ba was able to successfully expand her online presence and the artist can be proud of her extensive network of other artists worldwide.
