Betty Chilstrom

Betty Chilstrom lives in Portland, Oregon, and has been an artist for 68 years. She honed her skills by documenting the early years of her growing family in hundreds of sketchbooks. Later, she indulged her fascination with homes and buildings, creating an interpretive record of the architectural legacy of Portland.

Many of the houses and buildings she painted have been destroyed and replaced by parking lots or freeway overpasses. Her work is also interesting for that. She was the living witness of this architecture that is no longer. Past and present are woven together in her paintings.

Her paintings have captured old houses, bridges, street scenes and many other features of Portland and the northwest throughout the last century. Many of her works were inspired by the style of prewar. From her many travels she brought back a memory of the details of Victorian architecture and translated them into her oil paintings.

She was rediscovered in 1997 by Elizabeth Patapoff, member of the Oregon Historical Society, who recognized the value of Chilstrom's work many years earlier. It is thanks to Elizabeth that Betty was chosen by the OHS to show her paintings in a solo exhibit there in 1999.

Now, at eighty-seven, Betty is still a robust, glamorous, clear-thinking individual. You can often find Betty at meetings or other events sketching away, but she no longer paints. With over a thousand paintings under her belt, she has recorded the scenes that were important to her.