VERSAILLES ARTIST Beth Pritchett remembers why she did every painting in her art exhibition at the Woodford County Library. One painting was inspired by a chandelier where she gets her hair done. Another, pictured with her on the right, was inspired by her daughters and then altered by a light rain, which she says, “made this cool effect.” So for her, the inspiration for a painting can come from anywhere or anything. (Photo by Bob Vlach)

Elegance

By Bob Vlach

Woodford Sun Staff

If someone asks Versailles artist Beth Pritchett, “What’s your style?” She tells them, “I don’t think I really have one. I think I meet the art where it is.”

Her approach to creating art is simple. She paints what she sees or, more accurately, what inspires her to paint.

Watching her mom paint or doing a craft, and taking lessons to become a better artist and art teacher inspired Pritchett as a young child.

Because her mom was also “very hands-off as far as letting me find my own style and my own voice,” Pritchett says she learned to freely express herself in drawings and sketches from an early age – and to create art “outside the lines.”

Inspiration often comes from drawing or just doodling in her art journal. Doodling lets her play with different shapes. So the spirals and circles she creates while doodling can inspire a painting like “Rose Reflection” when she never intended to paint roses.

“I was throwing paint on and making marks and stenciling and trying to find balance with the color, but actually adding dimension to it. And that’s what it ended up being,” she says during an interview prior to her exhibition at the Woodford County Library.

Lately, Pritchett has been stretching herself artistically and painting more realistic images, including places she’s been, but she prefers expressing herself in the abstract. Often the abstract and realistic overlap in paintings that also show her affinity for animals and fauna.

“I love color. I love making your eye move across a painting,” says Pritchett, who paints watercolor, acrylic, oil and mixed media art.

Most of the paintings in her library exhibition were painted in the last couple of years. Her daughters and her partner, Greg Houser, who reconnected with her at their 45th high school reunion, are her biggest supporters and encouragers.

“If we’re going somewhere,” says Houser, “she’ll doodle or sketch … the whole time …”

And when Pritchett goes for a walk, “I take a look at what’s around me: the colors, shapes,” which, she says, can inspire her art. A photo of a woman whom she has never met can also inspire her to paint. It was her first portrait painting, so the idea of painting someone she knows “terrifies me,” she says.

After moving here 10 years ago, Pritchett was a tour guide at Woodford Reserve Distillery and an administrative assistant at the Kentucky School Boards Association in Frankfort, her full-time job.

She raised her daughters in Danville, where she spent 10 years teaching preschool students. That was her favorite job, she says, because helping 3- and 4-year-olds “learn how to learn,” and watching them grow as learners, “was so rewarding.”

Since retiring two years ago, Pritchett has devoted more time to painting and has been able to hone her creativity by taking classes at ArtSpace in Versailles and elsewhere. “Because I feel like you always have to grow, you always have to learn,” she says.

Not the same person as she was when she graduated from Paducah Tilghman High School or the University of Kentucky, Pritchett, 65, says her art has also evolved and should reflect how she’s changed as a person and an artist. “That’s why this is good for me,” she says of creating art and having her first exhibition.

“Supporting local artists,” says Tommy Dennison, the adult programming coordinator at the library, “is very important.”

Pritchett says she approached Dennison about having an exhibition at the Rich Gallery. She wanted to share her art with an audience – and perhaps inspire someone to paint.

“The time is right for me to do this. I don’t know if I could’ve done this last year or two years ago,” says Pritchett, who was born in Colorado, but has lived in Kentucky since she was 1.

An artist reception for Pritchett is Sunday, June 14, from 2 to 4 p.m., with the exhibition of her art in the library’s Rich Gallery ongoing through Aug. 5.