Paintings by Three AAG Members on Display in Greenville
Paintings by three former presidents of the Anderson Artists Guild are part of an exhibit at the
Greenville Center for the Arts.
“Making Our Mark: The Artists of Studio South” opened February 2 and runs through March 28. It features work by 17 artists who are part of a group called Studio South, which includes AAG members Ann Heard, Ruth Hopkins, and Rosemary Moore, who have all served as guild presidents. Studio South got its start over two decades ago when the 17 women were part of a class taught by painter Carrie Burns Brown at the Greenville Museum of Art. They formed this group in order to show their work and have exhibited often over the years, including at the Anderson Arts Center.
Ann Heard
In this current show, Heard has four abstract pieces that use acrylic or
collage or both. Wren and Red was inspired, she said, by “a love for both color and the bird.” Domino Affect came to her as a result of her experience in a group that plays Mexican dominoes every other week. Blue House was triggered by visitors. “I was thrilled to have bluebirds in the birdhouse last year,” she said. “I spent too much time watching them for a couple of months.” Mountain Stream, she said, “just happened. Many times I ask myself, ‘Where did that come from?’ The piece just painted itself.”
Rosemary Moore
Rosemary Moore also has four abstract pieces on display, all acrylic. “I don’t know what the inspiration for these pieces is,” she said. “Sometimes I just start working and it comes out.” Her paintings include Earth Fragments, Golden Spirit, and Magic Circles.
Ruth Hopkins, who works in watercolor, paints what she sees. “I’m sort
of a realist in what I paint,” she said. “I like to see something. I don’t think I have to copy it exactly as it is, and it’s okay to change the colors. But I start with something real.” All of her pieces for this show use shadows—that was originally going to be a focus but was dropped.
Ruth Hopkins
The spark for Stained Glass Shadows, Hopkins said, was “the shadows on the paneling coming through the stained glass in my window in our family room.” Blue Reflections represents an attempt to capture some blue-green glass objects she has. “They were a challenge that I set up to show transparency, and I just thought the colors were beautiful,” she said. Bromeliad Beauty was inspired by a plant she saw in the Bay3 artisan gallery one day while working there. And Shadows Dancing on the Window “was just a made-up setting though I have certainly seen many situations where shadows come from outside the picture and cast a shadow within the picture. This is so often seen in outside scenes with trees.”
For more information about the exhibit, visit https://www.artcentergreenville.org/currentexhibit/.
Pictured below left to right:
1st row: Ann Heard's Wren and Red, Domino Affect, Blue House
2nd row: Ann Heard's Mountain Stream; Rosemary Moore's Magic Circles, Golden Spirit
3rd row: Rosemary Moore's Earth Fragments; Ruth Hopkins' Stained Glass Shadows, Blue Reflections
4th row: Ruth Hopkins' Bromeliad Beauty, Shadows Dancing on the Window
