“Spotlight Show” art exhibit featuring Rockingham native Hannah Cole Buie
Hannah Cole Buie grew up in Rockingham, and from the beginning, she wanted to be an artist.
Her earliest memories are of accompanying her mother to Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, where her mother, well-known artist Kate Buie, painted boats and seascapes in oil while Hannah drew in pen and ink. Those years at the ocean, first at Murrells Inlet and later at the family house at Myrtle Beach, filled her summers, and as Hannah says, “They were the happiest of times.”
Unlike her mother who studied at the Ringling Brothers School of Art in Florida, Hannah chose to attend UNC Greensboro and major in art education. After a short experience teaching, a watercolor course in Myrtle Beach helped her decide that her time would be better spent painting. She began selling her work in Greenville, North Carolina.
“Then one day I went into a gallery in Greensboro and saw vibrant oil paintings from a Matthews-area artist, Connie Winters,” said Hannah Buie.
Following that visit, Buie attended a workshop led by Winters and followed that by a 10-day plain air workshop in Brantome, France, also led by Winters. Soon followed another visit to France to paint and take photos from which to paint on her return to the United States.
Recently, Buie has been a student of artist Dreama Tolle Perry from Cary, who has been invited by the Louvre in Paris, France to exhibit.
Buie’s art is and has been shown in Greensboro, Cottage Chic in Pinehurst, Chanticleer of Southern Pines, Aberdeen, The Campbell House of Southern Pines, a gallery in Atlanta’s Buckhead district and a bed-and-breakfast in Senoia, Georgia, as well as at the Leath Memorial Library in Rockingham.
For the last three years, Buie has participated in the Theater Art Guild of High Point’s annual fundraiser by donating a painting and selling her work.
The “Spotlight Show” featuring Buie will have an opening reception from 4 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 2, and the exhibit will be open from 2 to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays until March 18 in the Arts Richmond building, 123 E. Washington St.