Serendipity – or good fortune?  It’s happened in my life more than a few times.  It happened again in Blowing Rock this past June.  My husband and I took an impromptu motorcycle ride in the area and stayed at a B and B, and that’s how we met Brenda Councill – it was her place!  Brenda lives in a beautiful home with a million- dollar view so high up in elevation, that you even pass the top of the chair lifts for Ski Mountain!  Brenda’s home was very special – and we noticed the artistic touches – her hand painted floors, flair for decorating and making a cozy place, elegant, rustic and very comfortable at the same time!

As it turns out, Brenda’s a world-renown artist.  Her work has been featured on the Today Show, spotlighted by Martha Stewart, owned and/or touted by the Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos, Carol and Irwin Belk, the late Greta Garbo,  Michael Douglas, Joely Fisher, and Connie Stevens. You may have seen her work here in the Carolinas at the the new Belk Library at Appalachian State University, The Belk Atrium of Presbyterian College in South Carolina, and  locally in Kannapolis where she painted the interior of the largest painted dome in North Carolina:

Beginning this Saturday, August 11, 2012, the Hickory Museum of Art will proudly host artist Brenda Mauney Councill, in their Coe Gallery, as “she paints and brings to life a large-scale mural in-house!”

According to the website, “you’ll also learn to understand the “fundamentals of painting large-scale murals: drawing and composition, perspective and vantage points, mixing of paint and selection of mural paint, and translation of images from miniature to monumental.”  You, as a visitor, will have the opportunity to witness the entire progression of Brenda’s “unique and intimate idea blossom into a larger-than-life series of images on a canvas approximately twelve feet wide by twenty feet tall.”

Read more about Brenda Councill here.

See what’s in store at the exhibit at the Hickory Museum of Art, by clicking here.