Betty Anglin
Betty Lockhart Anglin (1937–2019), educator and artist, was born in Greenwood, South Carolina [1]. While teaching at the Charles H. Taylor Visual Arts Center, Hampton, Virginia, she received her Bachelors of Arts from The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1972.
Anglin’s teaching career continued at the Walter Cecil Rawls Library and Museum in Courtland, Virginia, the Trinity Lutheran School and the Christopher Newport University, both in Newport News, Virginia.
The longest teaching tenure were her 40 years at the Christopher Newport University to lucky legions of grateful pupils [2].
Known as a patient and gifted teacher, tributes tumbled in upon her death in May of 2019. One student said, “Betty’s deep sense of caring and her equal respect for us all, made us feel valued; it made us love art and love her!”[3]
Tandem to her teaching, accolades for Anglin’s watercolors came in, as they had throughout her adult life. She was known for mastering different styles of watercolors that were quite varied. Using a layering of colors, Anglin created naturalistic paintings of still life, garden scenes or warm views of homes. While teaching she would create small samples for students that she later incorporated in pieces, parts or wholes into larger finished collaged pieces.
Energy and bright colors form her vibrant abstract watercolors. Another of Anglin’s techniques was an unshared secret she called watercolor resist.
Her paintings were in many exhibits in Virginia, in addition to the Parthenon Museum in Nashville, Tennessee and at the well-respected, High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.
In a collaborative spirit, she and Michael Preble conceived the extraordinary exhibition at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, Virginia, An American Original: Margaret Lefranc Fifty Years of Watercolors. This show traveled also to Santa Fe, New Mexico and St. George, Utah in 2009 and 2010.
[1] https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-nws-betty-anglin-obit-0518-story.html (says that she is from Missouri)
[2] From Sandra McKenzie, President of the Margaret Lefranc Foundation that the Board of Visitors of Christopher Newport University conferred the title of Professor Emerita upon Betty Lockhart Anglin on May 9, 2011 that was signed by the President of the University, Paul S. Trible, Jr. In her book The Path Taken, a retrospective, Betty Lockhart Anglin (2012), the art work from the book was hung in the new Betty Lockhart Anglin Room in the Paul Trible Library at Christopher Newport University.
[3] From James Warwick Jones, artist, teacher, and curator at the Charles H. Taylor Arts Center, Hampton, Virginia.