Betty Huang’s passion for beauty and art fills the air in her Studio B Gallery on Goldsborough Street in Easton as she warmly welcomes a couple dropping in before dinner during a recent First Friday Gallery Walk. Huang’s gallery is one of the event’s featured venues and includes the works of award-winning national and international artists, including those of master painter Jove Wang.
The couple chats with Huang while taking in the gallery’s beautiful paintings and sculptures. Then they continue their downtown Easton walk after purchasing an original painting by Hiu Lai Chong, a Plein Air Easton grand-prize winner. Soft music plays in the gallery as Huang smiles enthusiastically each time visitors arrive, trailing a gentle breeze amid the sound of Canada geese honking as they fly by.
Members of the Working Artists Forum during Plein Air Easton 2021 Huang says her enthusiasm is driven by the joy she derives from art. She’s also very passionate about supporting a growing community of organizations and artists working together and has served in leadership positions of the Working Artists Forum and Discover Easton to help promote the local arts scene.
Learning of Huang’s 36-year career with the International Monetary Fund may impress those who meet her. But her superpower lies in how she translates her love and art using those diverse cultural experiences to influence every brushstroke and color palette created on her canvases.
“Now is my time to pursue my passion,” says Huang, who retired from IMF’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in 2006. She then moved to Easton in 2008 with her husband after spending time with family in Taiwan. She and her husband have now been married for more than 51 years.
Huang says her love of art began as a very young child and was influenced by her mother’s passion for art. Huang developed her painting techniques at the Academy Art Museum shortly after arriving on the Shore. One of her Academy Art Museum teachers, Bobbie Seger, later sponsored her as a member of the juried Working Artists Forum, which she says she was very eager to join.
Today the Working Artists Forum includes more than 100 juried artists from throughout the Delmarva Peninsula as well as Annapolis and Virginia. Forum artists will be exhibiting at this year’s Waterfowl Festival, which will be held from Nov.12-14, following a successful “Local Color” Plein Air Easton exhibition in July.
Huang says she quickly became involved in the local art community after moving to Easton and began exhibiting with a group of other artists in a small location on Harrison Street. She housed her gallery and artwork in a few different downtown Easton storefronts before landing at her current Goldsborough Street location eight years ago.
Now Huang paints daily in her upstairs studio as light filters in from the skylights and throws shadows on every object and tool, stopping only when visitors arrive at the gallery. A note posted outside of Studio B Gallery’s front door downstairs kindly asks visitors to ring the doorbell when the door is locked.
“I like to capture the light and emotion found in nature and pristine landscapes,” Huang says. “Every place has a different light and its own beauty, which is represented by the works of art in my gallery and through that of the Working Artists Forum.”
Huang says Working Artists Forum artists will be exhibiting at “A Small Gift of Art” at the Talbot County Free Library’s Easton branch from Dec. 1 through 30. Small, framed original paintings will be for sale and proceeds will help support the library. Other upcoming exhibition locations include Annapolis’s Quiet Waters Park, The Art League of Ocean City, and the “Local Color” exhibition of Plein Air Easton. More information is available at workingartistsforum.com.
Studio B Gallery
Betty Huang 7B Goldsborough St. Easton, Md. studioBartgallery.com [email protected]
443-988-1818