When I last caught up with Betty Curtiss, she was painting the Maresca Brothers butchers in Sergeantsville. She lovingly captured the thick slabs of red meat, links of sausage and kindly old men with huge cleavers and blood-soaked white aprons, whose cheeks are as pink as the flesh they are cutting into.

Her painting “Daikon Radishes” (pictured here) certainly holds greater appeal to the vegetarian in me. It’s part of the D&R Greenway’s exhibit, “The Land That Feeds You.”

With mixed-media curated by Jack Koeppel and Trician Fagan, this exhibit celebrates the agricultural use of land in the Garden State. As with all D&R Greenway exhibits, it makes the connection between our precious land and the need to preserve it NOW!

Other paintings include cows (at pasture, not butchered) by Joe Kazimierczyk and onions by Larry Chestnut.

Ms. Curtiss has been painting since the early ’90s. Before that, she had a theatrical career, touring with Mae West and Burt Lahr when she was 19. In the early ’80s the local legend helped to start Curtain Calls, the Arts Council of Princeton’s New Year’s Eve celebration, and worked with Victoria Liberatori to form the Princeton Rep Company.

Last year, for Tricia Fagan’s Dangerous Women 2 exhibit at The Gallery at Mercer County Community College, Ms. Curtiss painted Mae Questel, the voice behind Betty Boop.