Betty Edwards is an American art teacher and author, best known for her 1979 book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain® (now in its 4th edition).
She was born in 1926 in San Francisco, and grew up in Long Beach, California, attending Long Beach Polytechnic High School. An artist from an early age, Betty received a Bachelor's degree in Art from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1947, and exhibited her paintings in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s. She later received a Master's of Art from California State University Northridge and a Doctorate in Art, Education, and Psychology from UCLA (1976).
Betty taught at Venice High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District, then at a Los Angeles community college. From 1978 until her retirement in 1991, she was in the Art Department at California State University, Long Beach. As Professor of Art, she taught and conducted research until she retired, and was the founder of the Center for the Educational Applications of Brain Hemisphere Research at CSULB. She lives in La Jolla, California, and has two children, Anne Bomeisler Farrell and Brian Bomeisler; and two grandchildren, Sophie and Francesca.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain® was published in 1979 (above), and since then has remained the preeminent book on its subject, used as a standard text in many art schools around the world and on the shelves of artists everywhere. More than three million copies have been sold, and it has been translated into many foreign languages, including French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Hungarian, Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Japanese. Betty Edwards is the author of:
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain®, 1979 (revised and reprinted in 1989, 1999, and 2012), Penguin Putnam
Drawing on the Artist Within, 1986, Simon & Schuster
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain® Workbook, 1998 (revised and reprinted in 2012), Penguin Putnam
Color. A course in mastering the art of mixing colors, 2004, Penguin Putnam
From her earliest days as a high school art teacher, Betty began to develop her groundbreaking theories about how to teach drawing successfully to every student, and her graduate studies at UCLA confirmed the results. Until her retirement, she lectured widely around the world on the subjects of drawing, creativity, and creative problem-solving, focusing not just on individuals but on the corporate community and at museums internationally. She continues to write and consult, occasionally participating in DRSB Workshops taught by her son, Brian Bomeisler. Her lifelong mission has been to return art to the public school curriculum nationwide, in her passionate belief that we should be educating the "whole brains" of our children, not just teaching the "Three Rs" or to standardized tests that concentrate on the "left brain" only.
Her company, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Inc., develops special drawing tools, materials, workshops, and videos to help individuals learn to draw. The DRSB Web site is http://drawright.com.
