Why did the artist name this painting of prickly pear cactus Sunny Side Up? “The flowers reminded me of eggs,” states Beth Zink. She says she likes to invoke humor in her titles. “I would get a little bored with something like Prickly Pear XXIII,” she muses. The work measures 40" x 30".

“My paintings are very detail-oriented,  and I maintain the realism of plants—but I make up my own colors,” Zink comments. For example, she relates, “I was preparing to start a new painting one day and was tired of green. There was a tube of orange in front of me, and I thought maybe it was serendipitous. I painted an orange prickly pear and it sold fast, and then a purple agave, and it sold quickly, too. I thought, ‘Hmmm, maybe this is my signature style.’”

Zink enjoys the spontaneity of acrylic paint, which dries quickly and allows her to work more efficiently on large canvases. Her unique way with color makes her paintings highly recognizable and widely collected. “I like to use complementary colors—blue and orange, yellow and violet, red and green. When you put them next to each other, it’s like black and white, and they jump off the canvas. It’s not rocket science, just the laws of color theory. But people find it very arresting.”

Zink’s works are in a number of private and corporate collections around the country; one of her paintings hangs in the lobby of the new Scottsdale Healthcare Thompson Peak Hospital. Much of her work is by commission. She is active in the community and a regular participant in the Arizona Fine Art Expo, Sonoran Festival of Fine Art, and Hidden in the Hills Studio Tour, where she is always ready with a friendly handshake, a hug and a smile. The artist makes her debut into the Laguna Beach Art-A-Fair in California this summer and also welcomes art aficionados for workshops and private tours of her spacious studio by appointment.

Julie Razwick of Scottsdale discovered Zink’s work a few years ago and has since become an avid collector. “I was walking through the Art Expo, and her beautiful work just shouted out to me. Beth is a happy person, and it comes through in her paintings. I love the simplicity of her vibrant florals.”

Portrait of hands by Brandon Sullivan With sure strokes, the artist paints the star-like spines of a cactus.

Collector Jan Ghelfi of Phoenix says she appreciates the meticulous attention to detail in Zink’s work. “I have one piece of an agave titled Drama Queen, and it has given me a real appreciation for the agave plant. I’m a fourth-generation native and hadn’t paid that much attention to it before. I like the fact that Beth is local, and I like her demeanor, her calmness and the detail she puts into her paintings. Her whole heart goes into it.”

“Her paintings make you feel like you are sitting next to the cactus—like you are right in it,” adds Scottsdale interior designer Jean Lyn. “They are a breath of fresh air, almost like you can smell the flowers; her paintings put you in a Zen space. And no matter what style I am creating—Classic, Contemporary, Traditional—her paintings fit right in.”

Depending on the size of the canvas, Zink says she spends 30 to 50 hours on a painting. Prickly subjects take even longer. “I kept track one day and spent from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. just on the spines of a hedgehog cactus. I get into a groove with them, and it’s almost autopilot,” she says with a laugh. “There are some days I’ll start painting in the morning and don’t get out of my jammies until 4 or 5.

“I wake up and pinch myself that I get to live in this beautiful place, and that I can do what I absolutely love and it provides others so much joy, too,” she adds. “I finally realized a couple years ago that this is for real. It’s exciting to be so fortunate, but I’ve also worked very hard. I’m very focused on being the best person I can be and the best artist I can be. This really isn’t work for me; it’s truly a labor of love, and I absolutely cannot wait to rip the plastic off a new canvas and get started on a new piece.”

The soft white petals and bristling thorns of this night-blooming cereus are perfect examples “of the contrasts of nature at work in the Sonoran Desert,” says Beth Zink. The work, titled Sunkissed, measures 30" x 24".

“The buckhorn cholla bloom is fairly unremarkable—only about one to two inches in diameter—until you look very closely,” the artist remarks. Enamored with the tiny blossom’s petal formations, pistils, stamens and even some loose pollen, she re-created the species in a 36" x 48" painting titled Buckhorn Beauties.

A hedgehog cactus grows between the trunk and arm of a cordon cactus in the painting Home Away From Home, 60" x 48". The artist photographed this unusual marriage of plants at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix five years ago. “It is still there,” she says.