Betty LaDuke’s artistic journey has taken her from the Bronx, to Oregon with many past and continued explorations into Third World countries. She was born to parents who had emmigrated from villages in Ukraine and Poland. Her artistic path started when she was nine years old at the Worker’s Children’s Camp where she was first introduced to African American art and Mexican mural painting.

After attending Denver University and the Cleveland Institute of Art, LaDuke traveled to Mexico in 1953 to study at the Instituto Allende. There, LaDuke explored expressionism, cubism, and pre-Columbian Aztec and Mayan art. She also had personal encounters with Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, David Alfredo Siquieros, and Rufino Tamayo. LaDuke left the Instituto Allende after a year but continued to work in Mexico for another two years. During that time she painted murals in Otomi Indian villages for an organization sponsored by the United Nations and the Mexican government.

LaDuke returned to New York in 1956, but she soon felt out of place because of the focus on abstract expressionism in the art scene. She traveled with Vincent LaDuke to his family home on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota before settling in Los Angeles. During the following six years LaDuke finished an undergraduate degree from the Los Angeles State College, taught art in a junior high school, and finished a master’s degree in printmaking at the Otis Art Institute. In 1964 the LaDuke’s separated, and Betty LaDuke moved to Ashland, Oregon to accept a position at Southern Oregon State College.

LaDuke soon established roots in Ashland, marrying Peter Westigard in 1965. A sabbatical to India in the early 70’s began LaDuke’s yearly explorations around the world. Her paintings have followed her journeys first throughout Asia, then in Latin America and Africa, and most recently in Vietnam and Cambodia. In vivid colors and patterns, her artworks celebrate peoples’ identities, beliefs, and ways of life around the world. LaDuke has been especially interested in women and their contributions to society. Although rooted in scenes that LaDuke has witnessed in her travels, the paintings and prints often have a mythological or dream-like quality and are filled with both universal and specific cultural symbols.