William Betts

William Betts uses painting to explore images in the age of surveillance. He creates his work like a pointillist painter, carefully applying hundreds of acrylic dots to canvas to mimic the pixelated images captured by CCTV, or translating a single row of pixels from a digital photo into abstractions with an uncannily organic quality. Betts updates this method for the current century, using software and a CNC machine to deconstruct and replicate the image. “I look at images as a collection of data,” he has said, adding, “I use that data, either abstracting it or modifying it or manipulating it, to arrive at the image that I want.” By bringing these mundane snapshots of everyday life into the gallery, Betts casts the viewer as voyeur and reminds us that we are constantly being watched.