While Genoa artist Charlotte Shroyer carefully applies oil paint to canvas in her studio a half a mile from town, three of her paintings hang under in a gallery in Naples, Fla.
Two abstracts, "Doors of Time" and "Stones of Time," and a colorful figurative piece, "Life Dance," were accepted by jurors for a national competition at the Gallery Victoria.
"'Life Dance' is just fantastic," said Dr. Patrick Distasio, gallery director. "(Shroyer's pieces) are very classic architectural pieces with a lot of warmth."
He said the pieces show different styles she is capable of -- and that's the point of the show.
"What we were trying to do here is demonstrate what is art today," he said. "In other words, it's varied in every aspect of what you look at in fine art, and she added another dimension."
A fourth Shroyer, "Spring Splash," was also accepted, but could not be sent after the canvas was gashed in a studio accident.
Along with her show in Florida, she received a certificate of merit from a gallery in New York.
"That's quite significant," she said. "Any sort of recognition from a New York gallery is significant."
"I'm always painting," Shroyer said. "I try to work at least two to three hours a day. That's probably not enough, but with all the other things I'm doing, it works out."
Shroyer, who has studios in Genoa; Point Richmond, Calif.; and Taos, N.M., also runs CS Designs, a fine-art consultation business. She represents area artists and as far away as Rochester, N.Y. She gears her business toward interior design, architecture and on-site consultation.
"I'm very interested in promoting artists and promoting art in general," she said.
She also does special events, such as the Marin County show she's doing with an interior designer in September and October. They'll show work from about 12 impressionistic painters and host a reception.
"My goal is to educate people about art, the beauty of art and to promote artists," she said.
For Shroyer, who worked for years as a teacher and college professor, art is about passion. She left her work with children and teaching the learning disabled and deaf because it was satisfying, but not a passion.
"I was drying my hair in the mirror one day, and I said to myself, 'You don't have to do this anymore,' and I just quit," she said. "I wanted to do something that was a passion of the spirit, and to some degree that was, but painting is more so."
Shroyer works in several media, including Navajo-style woven pillows she sells at Brewery Arts Center, the Lone Tree Gallery in Minden and the Silver State Gallery in Reno.
Through CS Designs, she represents painters John Hunt (who painted the mural on the Brewery Arts Center) and John Farnsworth, a tapestry artist in New York, a photographer from Grass Valley and a metal artist from Truckee.
"So I stay very busy with my painting and then this business," she said.
ON THE NET
CS Designs:
www.csdesigns.com/
