Intense Visual Distortions: A Presentation by Artist Bethany Noël

This 1-hour presentation is included with paid museum admission, FREE with membership.

Offered in conjunction with Carmen Cicero Drawings and Watercolors: Tales of Intrigue, Danger and Humor, on view July 3 - October 5, 2025.

Bethany Noël is a New England-based artist and painter whose work captures the intense visual distortions of her migraines and the emotional resilience of her relationship with nature. Her paintings are acrylic, chalk pastel, and gesso on canvas and rely on her personalized approach to divisionism techniques.

They reflect the symptoms of chronic migraines, including ocular aura and a plethora of Alice-in-Wonderland effects (e.g., micropsia, macropsia, pelopsia, and teleopsia). Clinically, ocular aura is a neurologic artifact of migraine; experientially, it superimposes a fractal vision of color, light, and darkness over a person’s vision.

Bethany’s work delights in the eerie joy of this otherworldly vision, finding beauty despite unabating pain and giving visibility to an invisible disease.

Bethany’s artistic development combines medicine, self-expression, immersion in nature, and the exuberance of Boston’s art scene. After studying biochemistry at Reed College, she received one of two annual merit scholarships to complete her BFA in Painting at Rhode Island School of Design in 2011. Bethany has exhibited throughout the Boston area, including solo exhibitions at the Open Door Gallery in Boston, the Tokatlyan Gallery, and the Worcester Art Museum, and is a represented artist at Three Stones Gallery in Concord, MA. She has been featured in publications such as The Boston Hassle, Boooooooom, and MyModernMet.