Virginia C. Belser
plein air painter

Current Gallery representation includes:

  • Chiricahua Gallery, Rodeo, NM  

  • Art House Centro Gallery, Tucson, AZ

  • Toscana Gallery, Oro Valley, AZ

  • Green Monkey Boutique , Tucson, AZ

    Virginia has shown and sold her work in many juried exhibits, shows and shops in the Tucson area, eastern Nebraska, the central Pennsylvania area and southeastern coastal North Carolina. Since 2007 the venues for these shows has included:

  • Ironwood Gallery at the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum, Tucson, AZ

  • Phippen Museum, Prescott, AZ

  • Amerind Museum, Dragoon, AZ

  • Schemer Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ

  • San Pedro Chapel at Fort Lowell, Tucson, AZ

  • Tucson Jewish Community Center, Tucson, AZ

  • Tucson Botanical Gardens, Tucson, AZ

  • Steinfeld Gallery, Tucson, AZ

  • Bisbee Plein Air Festival, Bisbee, AZ

  • Gallery 9, Lincoln, NE

  • Four Corners Gallery at the Tucson Desert Museum, Tucson, AZ

  • Chiricahua Gallery, Rodeo, NM  

  • Art House Centro Gallery, Tucson, AZ

  • Artists and Makers Studios , Oro Valley, AZ

  • Toscana Gallery, Tucson, AZ

  • The Villages at Penn State Gallery, State College, PA

  • Foxdale Village Gallery, State College, PA

  • Art Alliance, Lemont, PA

  • State College Framing Company and Gallery, State College, PA 

  • Carlisle Arts and Learning Center, Carlisle, PA

  • Bellefonte Art Museum, Bellefonte, PA

  • Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, State College, PA 

  • Penn State Art on the Move, University Park, PA

  • Riley on Main, Boalsburg, PA

  • Rhoneymeade Arboreteum and Sculpture Garden, Boalsburg, PA

  • Fraser Street Gallery, State College, PA 

  • Sustain, Lemont, PA

  • Nittany Valley Chiropractic Center, State College, PA

  • Carlisle Arts Learning Center, Carlisle, PA

  • Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Ligonier, PA

  • Lynden Gallery, Elizabethtown, PA

  • Carolina’s Got Art, juried exhibit in Charlotte, NC

  • Airlie Moon shop, Wilmington, NC

  • MC Ernie Gallery, Wilmington, NC

  • Figments Gallery, Wilmington, NC

  • Ricky Evans Gallery of Southport, NC

  • Cary Gallery of Artists, Cary, NC

  • Wilmington Art Association Azalea Festival show, Wilmington, NC



Virginia has been engaged with art ever since she can remember….

From Saturday classes as a child at the local university to having her own cubby in 3rd grade for storing her creations, high school experiences included her first forays into life drawing, sculpture and learning the medium of oil paint.


Majoring in watercolors in college, Virginia’s senior thesis focused on the tension created by trying to describe vast space while using a minimum of painterly details.

She first discovered the medium of pastels in the mid 1990’s. After a painting hiatus focused on raising her sons, she returned to pastels in the mid 2000’s.  During those years, as her young boys were still a priority, her painting efforts occurred mostly on vacations or during intensive workshops. A two year stint in coastal North Carolina provided Virginia with several engaging landscape challenges.

A more recent move in the summer of 2020 brought Virginia to the saturated light of the Sonoran Desert in Tucson. She is embracing the challenge of a vast new landscape and an entirely different palette, as well as revisiting the medium of oil paints.

Virginia is an active Signature Artist and Executive Board member of the Sonoran Plein Air Painters. She participates in the Tucson Pastel Society and was a member of Gallery 9 in Lincoln, Nebraska. She was a Signature member and former president of the Central Pennsylvania Pastel Society, a member of the juried Farmland Preservation Artists, the Pastel Society of North Carolina, and The Pastel Society of Western New York.