It is entirely appropriate to revel in these paintings as poems for they do not start and stop in convenient but limiting prose. They do not conclude. They turn in the present and we go with them. We are spared much of the sense of tragedy even though it is not omitted from the stories. Betsy Dovydenas’s paintings are more an art of lyricism which fits easily into the 18th century German philosopher Hoelderlin’s splendid definition, “The lyric poem idealist in appearance is ingenuous in its meaning. It is the never ending image of a single emotion.”* This is how art refreshes through the livelihood of the paint, and why we must slow down just long enough to grasp the emotion.
-Kinney Frelinghuysen
*As quoted by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler on the subject of Juan Gris in Juan Gris: His Life and Work, Curt Valetin, 1947.