BELIZEAN ARTS

Corrine Petteys is no stranger to Central America or Mexico. A multi-talented accomplished artist in many media, she has exhibited as a painter in Belize, Guatemala and Mexico from 1992-2016.Her first trip to Belize in 1991 inspired return trips, and in 1992 she exhibited 17 oil paintings on canvas at the Bliss Institute National Gallery in Belize City with the help of well known artist, Phillip Lewis, and then curator, Lita Hunter Khron. 

 

The title of her show was: Tek Some, Lef Some, which to her had significant meaning to tread lightly on the places you travel to. Take something from the richness of another culture, but give something back in return. This she did first in Bali in 1989 being part of a Topeng Dance and mask making workshop, the first ever cross cultural workshop of its kind. 

 

The Bliss exhibit was covered by all media. The three TV stations in Belize, by radio and in the newspapers. People were calling her name in the streets! “Hey painter lady, you paint good!” And for years after she was still referred to as painter lady. She wanted to paint like a native for that show, as she was inspired by the beauty and simplicity of the artist’s work in Belize, and the amazing talent of her friend, Nelson Young. 

 

​

In 2015 she returned to Belize and painted a series of new canvases, and collaborated on several abstracts with Nelson Young, that sold quickly in Belizean Arts. Almost a year to the day later, after this first Belize show, she did a larger one person show with oil canvases of various sizes, wire sculptures and assemblages in Antigua, Guatemala in 1993. This show was titled: Songs of Sirens. This show reflected an amazing inner and outer spiritual journey and her life in Guatemala, as well as her sailing adventures down the Belize coast to Guatemala, and becoming a scuba diver in Honduras. This show was covered in Guatemala’s two biggest national newspapers. Though in one paper they only printed her first name, misspelled. 

 

In 2016, she painted two large oil paint canvases for a show she curated with four Mexican painters at a friends restaurant, Sweetbeat, in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico in Chiapas. And she painted a dream like smaller canvas that hung in a friend’s Abuelita bookstore there until she left. One of these large canvases has sold in Belizean Arts in San Pedro, but the other larger one and the smaller one are still on sale there, as well as many of her other oil paint canvases painted from 2015-2016 in Belize. 

 

Corrine is a grateful for all her travels and exhibits in these three wonderful countries and the enrichment it has brought to her life.“I like nothing better than to go to a country where I know no one and do something creative with the artist’s there, and help each other grow from our collaboration and have fun doing so.”