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Mercer County's beauty vividly captured in Armstrong's work

By Heather Castro Contributing Art Writer

Taylor's Grocery is by Jesta Bell Armstrong (1905-1989). Photo courtesy of the Art Museum of the University of Kentucky

• UK exhibit beautifully showcases Kentucky's master painters

Accompanying Master Works by Kentucky Painters: 1819-1935 is a smaller show featuring another Kentucky artist, Jesta Bell Armstrong. She is known for her paintings of scenic views and architecture of her native Mercer County, which she captured through the seasons and throughout many years; her career lasted from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Jesta Bell: J.B. Armstrong Discovered provides us not only with a visual record of these vistas, some of which no longer exist, but an appreciation of Armstrong's status as an eminent colorist.

Working in oils and watercolor, Armstrong (1905-1989), Both a student and an instructor at Asbury College, she painted in an Impressionistic style, capturing the landscape of Kentucky in bright, sometimes bold, colors. In an undated Kentucky River scene, the sky and water show traces of almost Caribbean blues and greens, tones echoed in the bright blue house on the right bank and vivid green flora to the left.

In a similar scene, Long Kentucky River, the season has changed: The sky is a muddled blue, and green has taken over the river.

The love of strong colors was a lasting one. In a late work, 1981's Backyard at Home, the yellows and vivid reds of fall dominate the scene and direct the viewer's gaze. The bright tree leaves lead the eye to smaller traces of red flowers around the birdbath and soft yellow surrounding the outbuilding, a touch that permits color to be the guide to the yard.

For scenes with more muted tones, color remains with an architectural role, as in The Green Roof. A ramshackle gray country house appears behind a crumbling stone wall. Clothes in muted colors are drying on a line in the rear, but the titular green roof captures the eye immediately, balancing the gray, cloud-covered sky with the greenish grasses beyond the wall.

The location of the house in The Green Roof is a mystery. Armstrong was known to drive into the country and paint architecture or scenes that caught her eye. Our appreciation of this simple scene, capturing a moment in the history of the Kentucky countryside, is enhanced by the hand of the artist. It becomes not just a house whose location might never be known, but one whose appearance can never be forgotten.