During September Bishop’s Stock is featuring two artists who moved to the Snow Hill area several years ago. When Christie Taylor and Fred Sprock discovered Worcester County’s proximity to coastal bays and adjacent marshes they knew this was where they wanted to build a home and settle into Eastern Shore life. One of the driving forces in this move was to create studio space for each of them in a setting surrounded by the landscape they love.

Both Christie Taylor and Fred Sprock call themselves “landscape artists” but that is about as close as they get with their unique painting disciplines and techniques. Several years ago Christie, an art consultant, returned to painting to focus on the beauty of the salt marshes surrounding their home. Christie does studies in acrylic on paper and creates oils on panels – all that reflect a time and place that constantly changes with time of day and season. Her painting style “utilizes” the freedom nature holds over marshland and gives her a chance to “escape” to her studio.

Fred Sprock is a full time painter who is quite disciplined. He considers himself a landscape artist who scouts compelling imagery that ranges from a dying tree to the architectural interest of a farm house. When a subject or image catches his eye he takes photographs to use as references. He returns to his studio and does studies that may or may not become larger studio paintings. Even his still life paintings he considers “landscapes” since they are part of a smaller setting. His paintings have a luminescence he gets from layering paint many times with palette knives, scraping off to leave depth then finishing 10% of the painting with brushes.