Three different artists with three different styles coming to River Gallery

When Tracy Sharp took part in her first art show, Scott Hill was there. Eight years later, she is about to make another debut - this time, her first exhibit at River Gallery in the Bluff View Art District. And again, Scott Hill will be there.

Sharp had only begun painting four months prior to that inaugural exhibit in Atlanta's Matre Gallery, but Hill says you couldn't tell that from her work.

"I thought she had been doing it for years," he recalls, laughing at the coincidence of this exhibition after not seeing each other for eight years.

Sharp, Hill and Christina Goodman are the trio of Southern artists whose work is featured at River Gallery through the end of November. Hill paints the power of nature's moods, from tranquil to ominous. Figurative artist Sharp creates ethereal images of the female form. Goodman's miniatures are tiny jewels that are hand-painted and hand-gilded.

"I think that people will love this imagery," says Angie Supan, River Gallery co-director. "It ranges from very dream-like and moody to exquisite little gems. You'll find Scott and Tracy's work has a quality where you can bring your own story to the piece and get lost in it. Christina is a jewelry artist; hers are precious, miniature paintings on jewelry."

Sharp, a 49-year-old Atlanta artist, says she is the daughter of a painter and grew up surrounded by art but never picked up a brush until four months before her 2008 debut.

"I am not a conceptual painter, I paint more from response," she describes. "Figures are almost always form, a lot of them female, and I just go from there."

She calls her figures surrounded in darkness as "journey pieces - that sense of moving into the unknown and experiencing something new."

Each piece requires several weeks to produce because of the layering process she applies. Her mixed-media works might include coffee - "I paint a lot with coffee" - acrylic, oils, resin, varnish "and a good bit of plaster."

Hill, whose studio is in Rising Fawn, Ga., also tries to draw viewers into his work.

"I try to get just enough of a story that a viewer can look at it and participate. It might not be what I was thinking with the image, but it's drawn the viewer in," he says.

Hill, 45, says when he was a child his dad thought he'd grow up to be an inventor "because I was always taking little pieces and objects out of the junk drawer and constructing something with them and painting them."

In college, he began illustrating children's books and considered pursuing a career in graphic art until a professor steered him to painting. Now he names his favorite pieces as those done on vintage postcards, children's blocks and old wood, which he paints and recycles into artwork.

"I always like people to ask me what the pieces are painted on because a lot of them have stories about where they were found or what they are," Hill says.

Goodman, a 53-year-old resident of New Orleans, taught herself to paint 25 years ago. She says she found inspiration in Italian Renaissance and Northern European paintings.

"I had an idea to combine my love of Renaissance painting, gilding and miniatures into jewelry. I taught myself to paint in a scale small enough to wear as jewelry. My first pieces were quite chunky but evolved to a finer scale over the years," she describes.

Her tiny tableaux are painted in delicate strokes using a magnifier and fine-tipped brushes. She paints in acrylics on gilded resin, wood and copper.

"Larger paintings are built out of wood, gessoed then gilded with 22k gold leaf," she explains. "The jewelry is also gilded, then painted and finally assembled into finished pieces. The whole process takes several weeks. One painting can take from one day to several days depending on the size and complexity. "

Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6284.