Betsy Eby is an American painter and musician whose work explores the relationships between color, sound, rhythm, and perception. Drawing from both her visual art practice and her deep connection to music, Eby creates atmospheric abstractions that investigate harmony, materiality, and emotional resonance. Her paintings often emerge through layered systems of luminous colorfields interrupted by gestural linear elements that bury, recede, and reemerge across the surface, creating compositions that feel both meditative and dynamic. Rooted in an ongoing exploration of nature, memory, and the unseen structures that connect human experience, her work moves fluidly between the microscopic and the cosmic.


In her more recent work, Eby has expanded her exploration of sound and harmonic connection through encaustic painting processes inspired by vibration, rhythm, and the healing properties associated with sound frequencies. Drawing from investigations into Solfeggio Frequencies, soundscapes rooted in hertz frequencies known by researchers to have healing properties on the brain and body’s neural networks, Eby creates resonant colorfields that embody harmonic systems while introducing gestural line work that disrupts and rebalances those systems. Throughout her practice, she remains deeply interested in the ways color, rhythm, and repetition can evoke both tension and restoration. She often references the Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi, or “golden repair,” viewing painting as a process of disruption and renewal where traces of vulnerability become integral to the final work.


Eby earned her BA in Art History from the University of Oregon in 1990 and has exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Tacoma Art Museum, Columbus Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Morris Museum of Art, and Ulrich Museum of Art. A native of Oregon, Eby cites influences ranging from the Northwest mystics and Pacific Northwest modernism to atmospheric abstraction. She currently divides her time between studios in Columbus and Wheaton Island with her husband, painter Bo Bartlett.