Beth Kurtz was born and raised in Norfolk, Virginia, and moved to New York City after graduation from Sweet Briar College. Before beginning to paint, she spent years in the world of dance and theater. She danced with the New Jersey Classic Ballet and, in New York, with Ballet Players, Ballet Concepts, Ballet Images, and Ballets Zsedenyi. As a sideline Beth specialized in the historical dances of the Renaissance court, and directed Capricorn Theatre Company, presenting historically based productions such as 17th-century masques and collages of American folk music and dance.

Her husband, Edward Kurtz, has enthusiastically supported her work throughout their long marriage.

Beth is largely self-taught in the art of painting. While in theater she learned concepts of composition and dynamics; later she did self-directed studies in color theory, optics, perspective, materials science, and portrait and figure drawing. Major influences include early stints as a model for Francis Cunningham, David Leffel, Peter Cox, and Gregg Kreutz. After beginning to paint, she participated in internet oil painting forums, especially the Cennini Forum, as well as the Online Artists Guild. She credits the director of the Cennini Forum, Roberts Howard, for much of her knowledge. She has studied life drawing with David Kassan and Anthony Antonios.

As a painter, Beth experimented with landscape, interior, still life, portraiture, and fantasy subjects before discovering astronomy in the early 1990s. She was invited to present solo shows of her galaxies, nebulae, and stars at Williams College and Arunah Hill Natural Science Center in Massachusetts, and in New York at the Wagner College Art Gallery, Rockland County Community College, and the New York Amateur Astronomy Association. She also showed this work in New York at the Cork Gallery of Lincoln Center, the Lever House Gallery, the Salmagundi Club, the Stage Gallery in Merrick, New York, and the Fiske Planetarium in Boulder, Colorado.

She later embarked on a project combining archaeological artifacts and human faces into images resonating with the deep past. She showed this work in New York at the Queens Museum of Art, the Manhattan Borough President’s Office, and the West Side Arts Coalition, and also at the Khan Museum in Ashkelon, Israel, and the Artfair Autotron in Rosmalen, the Netherlands.

Soon, seeking a more concrete reality, Beth began to focus on the objects of everyday life – fruits, vegetables, flowers, cups, and bowls. The preoccupation with color and light that first drew her to the macrocosm again received her attention, and the mysteries of the Artifacts series left the stage.

In 2003, she began a new series on the faces and places of New York City, in the subway, buses, cafes, parks, and ferries. This project continues to date. More recently, miniature versions of still life and landscape subjects, some as small as 2” x 3”, have become new variations on her familiar themes.

Beth is a member of the Salmagundi Club of New York, a Life Member of the Art Students League, a former Vice President of the West Side Arts Coalition, and a founding member of the Online Artists Guild. Far from having abandoned her roots in dance and theater, her continued work with private ballet students completes her feeling of having found the best of both worlds.