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Artists In Oldsmar Exhibit Offer Style Contrasts

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By Klint  Lowry | The Suncoast News

Published: January 19, 2008

OLDSMAR, Fla. - OLDSMAR, Fla. - Residents who have reason to go to City Hall in the next several days may want to budget themselves a little extra time for the trip.

The walls of City Hall are moonlighting as an art gallery, as the city is presenting an exhibition by a pair of Pinellas County artists, Betsy Schoepf and Ralph Montgomery.

The collection of paintings and sketches are an eclectic mix from two artists whose styles are utterly distinctive from one another, yet somehow are as harmonious as neighbors as the people who created them.

"We met and got to know each other at civic functions, things like that," Schoepf said at a reception for exhibition on Tuesday.

She and Montgomery live a few blocks from each other in the Indian Rocks Beach community. They share a camaraderie as fellow artists, and they and their spouses have gotten to be good friends over the years. They have both developed good reputations among the local arts community.

As harmonious as they are as friends, they are a visual "Odd Couple" as artists, a disjointed combination that still seems to fit together.

"Ralph is a far more proficient artist than I am," Schoepf said. She describes her own artistic background as "hit or miss," a lifetime interest often interrupted by life until the last few years.

Montgomery's work, on the other hand, shows the influence of his professional and personal experiences over the years. His half of the show in itself includes a wide range of styles, from abstracts and impressionistic fantasies to precisely detailed renderings of buildings that hint to his career as an architect.

"I try to go with the subject, whatever mood," Montgomery said, explaining his stylistic range.

Many of his pieces reflect his years of travel in the Middle East.

"I first started traveling there in '73," Montgomery said. His travels took him to every country in the Middle East, either working as an architect or teaching architecture.

When he wasn't working, he used his pencils to capture images that caught his eye. He created sketches that are appealing for the realism his technical skills allowed and for the personal touch added through his artistic instincts.

Some of the most interesting pieces are those sketches he drew while a civilian hostage during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

"They took several hundred hostages," Montgomery said.

Saddam Hussein used the hostages as human shields, Montgomery explained, putting them at strategic locations and installations to prevent them from being attacked by opposition military forces.

There were some scary moments, Montgomery recalled, and hardships. At one point, the hostages were only getting a couple handfuls of rice to eat a day. He and his son-in-law, also a hostage, each lost about 25 pounds.

But most of the time, being a hostage was monotonous experience.

"I read the dictionary, front to back, a couple of times," he said. He also read the Bible.

And he drew. The only paper available was letterhead stationary from the American School of Kuwait, and there were only plain old soft-lead No. 2 pencils.

Still, the sketches he produced still show the same attention to detail and sense of intimacy as his other work.

Intimacy is an adjective that can be applied to Schoepf's work as well, though her subject matter is world's apart from Montgomery's sketches from the Middle East.

Soft, colorful and gentle, Schoepf specializes in serene beach scenes. Working off photographs she takes herself, her paintings convey a sense of the uniquely peaceful serenity that exists only during quiet moments at the beach.

"If I tried to do mountains and rivers, it wouldn't work, because it's not who I am," she said. "As long as I work at the beach, I'm going to put it to work for me."

Often focusing on one or two people, Schoepf looks for images that are quiet and sentimental.

"I think people are drawn to the sentimental," she said.

Schoepf has only been able to devote herself to art full time in the last few years, since her retirement, and is having the time of her life.

"After all," she said, "Grandma Moses didn't get started until she was in her 80s. I got a 10-year head start."

All the pieces in the exhibition are available for purchase. The exhibition will be at City Hall through Feb. 28.

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