The Times-Journal

Her new studio and a collection of her paintings, both old and new, will be shown Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 23-25 by artist Sissy Petterson, at her home. The hours Friday and Saturday are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Sunday

from 1-4 p.m.

Petterson moved into her present home late this summer, “got it all straight in two weeks,” she says, laughing, and filled each of its 10 rooms with her paintings in the next two weeks. For the show, she has issued 250 invitations for patrons of her art.

“All the paintings are not for sale,” she says. “All but two of the matted ones are – the others will have “NFS” clearly marked. All have been catalogued and most are priced. Those who attend the show are welcome to view the displays in each room.

In the studio, large windows cast light upon a wall of some of Petterson’s ’60s and ’70s work. On a nearby easel stands a composite of the Fort Worth Zoo, with her daughter Dot Kent and granddaughter Joy Grace Kent standing amid the fanciful animals.

And a still life of lilies and mums awaits hanging, “the first painting completed in my new studio.”

The paintings in the show include mixed medium, watercolors, oils and her favorite medium, “light acrylic, which means watered down, using a wet on dry technique,” she explains.

Her subjects, familiar to any resident of the Black Belt, range from true-to-life colors in the delicate pastels of spring blossoms to the brilliant hues of autumn. Petterson especially enjoys setting her still life scenes with rustic baskets, old stoneware pitchers and often a piece or two of fruit as an accent.

Petterson, a Selma native, took her first art course at the University of Alabama, where she was enrolled in the School of Design. After marrying and moving first to Pensacola, then to Nashville, she recalls “spending my time baby sitting with my children Dot and Charlie, who painted with me.”

She has also studied at the University of Tennessee, at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Art Center in Nashville and she has taken a number of one-day courses with the Selma Art Guild.

Her love of art began in childhood and is continuing “because it is something I enjoy and Selma people seems to enjoy.”

Petterson admires the work of Black Belt artists and feels “our work enhances cultural opportunities for everyone.”