Currently on exhibit at Blue Ridge Mountain Arts Association are the Pear Street Painters. This group of seven painters from Rome, GA share the same name but their painting techniques and subjects are different.  According to Randy Eidson, founder of Pear Street painters, the group members look towards each other for opinions and suggestions even though each has an individual approach to creating their works.  He says that when they are together everyone just paints.  Occasionally, one person steps away from the canvas and asks another member to come look and help figure out why a part of the work “doesn’t feel right.”  The works on exhibit vary from landscapes to flower still-lifes to portraits to illustration to abstract..  Two of the painters are also long-time sculptors.  Selections of their sculpture works are also on exhibit.

Becky Lucas’ favorite painting subject is flowers.  In different paintings, the viewer can see techniques of Dutch still-lifes or flashes of Van Gogh’s colors.  She says that the variety in her styles comes from her experience as an elementary school art teacher.  She strives to give students a wide variety of experience with different art movements and her role as an art mentor gives her familiarity with different techniques and media.  She is especially excited about watercolor batik, a new technique for her that she is trying.  Lucas uses paper for the canvas for watercolor batik. She dribbles melted wax onto the paper and uses the borders of the wax to control the flow of the watercolors.

Judy Schmidt likes the feeling of large canvases because they don’t constrict her as much as small canvases do.  In fact, her painting of a sunset over a Florida lake is painted on a room door.  She likes a large painting space because of her experience as a muralist.  Currently, Schmidt coordinates the arts and medicine program Floyd Medical Center in Rome.  There both the exhibits she curates and the art therapy she organizes play a part in helping patients step out of their discomfort.

Becky Davis was a metal sculptor for many years.  She and her husband also had a foundry.  However,   family illness made it difficult to spend long hours heating, working and cooling the metals.  From sculpture she turned to painting, especially familiar landscapes from Appalachia, where she grew up.  She also paints portraits.  This influences another favorite subject of hers, studies of single wild animals in their natural habitat.  Her subtle use of various color palettes add movement and lightness to her oil paintings.  In Rome, she teaches art classes once a week and balances her teaching through the fellowship that Pear Street painters provides.

Melissa Harvil paints with textures.  She glues different objects to her canvas or drips acrylic onto her paintings and illustrations to create works that viewers can see and feel.  Her painting of the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica demonstrates her techniques.  She uses crushed eggshells painted over with turquoise to make the volcano.  Below it, pink overlaid with bubble-wrap stamped green shows the tree line.  Next, a section of non-textured green and golden brush strokes depict a meadow.  On the lowest portion of the painting, she has glued English peas and painted over them in black with green undertones to suggest the bumpiness of lava rocks. While creating this work, one of her best fans, her parrot, plucked several peas from the canvas, enjoying the painting’s texture more than the color.

Randy Eidson, founder of Pear Street Painters, is a pastel artist.  His current themes are based on his trip to Africa in 2014.  These pastels include scenes from rural villages and his safari.  Oftentimes, he presents his work in diptychs so that he can capture the wide expanse of the African savannah.

Modern art lines and illustration styles influence Linda Angio’s paintings.  Her works focus on a person’s interaction with a single object.  Generally, she prefers muted colors.  She also sculpts with metal using similar styles that are in her paintings.

Eric Dempsey paints with acrylics.  His large canvases uses mainly in brown, red, grey and blue tones to create abstracts of contrasting whorls and color bleeds.

Pear Street Painters “Once in a Blue Moon” exhibit continues at Blue Ridge Mountain Arts Association until Feb. 20^th.