Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist

ABOUT THE WORK

Known for the atmospheric stillness she brings to her works, Betsy Westendorp manages to capture the fleeting moment of beauty that exists in nature. Westendorp’s Daybreak is reminiscent of her own idyllic afternoons gazing at Manila Bay. Betsy Westendorp has always taken artistic inspiration from the wondrous beauty of nature. Although primarily creating flower and landscape paintings of tropical heliconias, orchids in all forms of expression, red poppies in an open field, and shrubs of blooming hydrangeas in the palest of blues, the most muted of pinks, and the subtlest of whites, the Spanish artist has shifted to painting the heavens. Her love affair with the skies began with a routine of the beautiful and picturesque skylines of Roxas Boulevard. Since then, Westendorp has endlessly painted skylines in their different moods of atmospheric stillness to capture the colors and movements of clouds, sunsets, and sunrises incredible in their explosions of bright colors, enveloped in a feeling of love and nostalgia. Even during her afternoon constitutionals back in her home country of Spain, Westendorp would lovingly and constantly think about the warm and inviting blanket skies of the Philippine Islands. Whether making big or small art pieces, Westendorp skillfully works her magic of capturing and preserving nature’s majestic moments. Through good and bad times, she has always regarded that painting “has always helped her to endure pain.”