Beth began her life’s work as a professional artist and designer while studying at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning. She taught art at public and private schools, worked at a top ad agency, designed and illustrated books at a publisher, and did freelance and commissioned art while raising her family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She also owned a small art gallery and studio where she taught all ages and offered summer art camps. More recently she’s done landscape, still life paintings and portraits in oils. She was a member of the Portrait Society of America.

Now you can find her living in the South, working in her home studio creating art for multiple products in Bell Buckle, Tennessee.

WHY STATIONERY?: Hallmark was my favorite shop growing up! My first part-time job as a teenager was in a gift shop in the Mall and I highly urged my owners who mainly sold stickers and plushes, to consider greeting cards. They ended up carrying Sandra Boynton’s Recycled Paper Cards and I was in heaven! I still have a sticky note pad with “Don’t Let the Turkeys Get You Down” on it and I refuse to use it! When I was a little girl, I played with my birthday cards like paper dolls. So naturally, having always wanted to do art and illustration, cards and stationery is where I wanted to end up! I make original Christmas cards every year for family and friends.

FAVORITE MEDIUM: I have always loved painting with watercolor from an early age, and just as much, I love to draw with a regular old No. 2 pencil! I do love gouache too (opaque watercolor) for that soft, chalky color you can get. I have done pretty much every medium there is!

FAVORITE ARTISTS: John Singer Sargent, Fairfield Porter, Charley Harper (another Cincinnatian), Claude Monet, Claudia Rilling (She taught me to paint better with oils), Jon Redmond, Andrew Wyeth

FAVORITE ILLUSTRATORS: Charles M. Shulz (Peanuts!), Ernest H. Sheperd (Winnie the Pooh), Beatrix Potter, Trina Schart Hyman, Holly Hobbie (Toot & Puddle books), Sandra Boynton, Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes)

WHERE ARE YOU FROM: I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and graduated from Greenhills High School (great school but gone now - yay Pioneers!) and the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning (Go Bearcats!). I loved living in Cincinnati! It was full of art and I practically lived at the Art Museum growing up. I actually lived in a house abutting Winton Woods park and the lake. I could ride the bus downtown or to the TriCounty mall before I got my drivers license. We had great libraries and I was an avid reader. I was either running around outside, playing sports, or reading or drawing! The neighborhood was always full of friends ready to play games or ride bikes or go to the ice cream shop or swimming pool. I never wanted to leave there.

I was a Middle School Art teacher in my second year of teaching, when I met my soul mate and we got married and moved to Columbus, Ohio. I ended up at one of my dream jobs of working in the Creative Department of a very successful Ad Agency based out of New York City! I was doing work for Wendy’s, Ohio State University (where my husband was finishing his degree), Pioneer Stereos, Worthington Foods, the Governor of Ohio, etc. (A little of everything and I illustrated A LOT!)

Then Craig and I moved to Pennsylvania where he is from, about two years after we were married. We moved to beautiful Lancaster, PA where we raised our children. This is where I opened my own Art Gallery and Teaching Studio called Hatch Studio & Gallery. From there we’ve lived in Rock Hall, Maryland on the Bay and then Philadelphia, PA. Which then brings us here to Middle Tennessee which is lush and green and beautiful all the time!

DESCRIBE YOURSELF: Very nostalgic (can you tell?), classic, gentle, creative (of course), curious, introverted, fun (I love to laugh!), tall (I played basketball through most of my years in school, except when I made the Drill Team my sophomore year on), I love being a wife to Craig and mom to my son and daughter, and I have always been a Christian and volunteered most of my life. I spent my teen years doing summer mission trips to help nonprofits in different states to do things like repair children’s homes for a ministry that served troubled youth, helped build retreat centers, lots of manual labor for ministries that needed help restoring places so that could serve needy people… and I loved being in Youth Group in my school age years where I really experienced the presence of God in those early morning worship and prayer times before serving.

MY HEROES: My Grandpa Ellwood and Grandma Hazel Middleton - they taught me the values I’ve carried throughout my life and loved me very much! I learned so much from them in all aspects of living. I just wish they were still here to see all the art I’m making now- they would love it!