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Her touch gives walls a wild range of scenery

Beverly Barris uses various techniques to make fanciful murals of countrysides, storybook scenes and more.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published July 28, 2006

LUTZ - As an artist, Beverly Barris knows how to transform the ordinary into the unique.

On canvas and paper, her landscapes and human figures exude an inner life, a quality so ethereal that it can be expressed only through a gifted artist's hand.

"It's my real love," she says of the drawings and paintings that quilt the walls of her 3,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bath home in Lutz near Hanna Road.

The house, which sits on 2 acres off a lane shaded by thatches of tree branches and moss, also serves as a showroom of sorts for Barris' business.

A graduate of Parsons School of Design and the Art Students League in New York, Barris was an art director at Brides magazine and a designer of housewares, dolls and toys in the 1970s and '80s. She has even illustrated children's books, greeting cards and a coffee-table book on fashion.

"It's been quite a career," she says, laughing one afternoon while sitting at her dining room table beneath a marble-textured ceiling tray and antiqued dome light that she painted herself.

So when she and her husband, Ron, moved from New Jersey to Lutz five years ago to be closer to family, she added to her already eclectic resume.

Now Barris paints murals, trompe l'oeil, faux finishes and custom portraits for clients across the Tampa Bay area. Proof is in the portfolio of photographs of her Old World style murals of the Italian and English countryside, of angels and fairies, as well as storybook scenes and baseball players, jungles and seascapes.

Her work warms the walls in homes from FishHawk Ranch and MiraBay to Cheval to South Tampa to Brandon. She has painted whimsical farm-scene murals on the walls of Joshua House, a shelter for abandoned, neglected and abused children. Her work is also on display in practical ways around her Lutz home, most noticeably in the master bedroom and bath. One, a Florida seascape with a roseate spoonbill, serves as a backdrop to her four-poster bed. Another scene with lions and tigers unfolds across the bathroom wall behind the large sunken bathtub.

The Barrises work side by side on a lot of projects.

"Ron is excellent at the faux painting and finishing," she says.

In the kitchen, they've applied a faux finish made from crushed quartz directly over old Formica countertops.

"It's incredibly durable and heavy and wonderful," she says of the countertops, which now resemble a dark green channel of sea. "Basically we've redone everything. This kitchen was all beige Formica when we bought the house, which was in terrible shape - a handyman special."

Her goal, and one that mirrors her most frequent customer request, was to give the kitchen the look of an old Tuscan villa. They faux painted light fixtures, spindles in the stairs, switch plates, even the walls in the living room, which have been textured and painted a warm, earthy shade.

Clients most frequently want their house to have a Tuscan look, no matter the style. Barris used the look liberally within her own home, which is contemporary and with large windows that drink in the backyard scenery.

The couple bought real estate in Lutz on the advice of friends. Barris says she knew within minutes of seeing the house that she wanted to buy it, after having a dream involving the house years ago.

"I saw the back yard, the trees," but had no clue where it was, she said. The oaks and the mossy lake in the distance could have been anywhere, since the landscaping doesn't include palm trees or look like it's in Florida.

The couple, who have a grown daughter who works as a Broadway actress and appears in television commercials, share the house with two cats and Ron's electric guitar he performs around town as a blues guitarist.

Inside the studio, a large sculpture sits on the floor surrounded by tubes of paint. Made of mesh, plaster and clay, a woman's head pushes through a bloom of pink petals. It's aptly titled Blossoming Woman.

Another sculpture, intended for hanging on a wall, depicts three women in various stages of life. Barris says she would ultimately like to create a series of women's heads depicting women's emotions. She often sells her original artwork or more moderately priced giclee prints to clients who commission her for faux finishes, murals or trompe l'oeil.

The faux painting, she says, adds a "serene mood," making a house a sacred place, "a place where we can get away from everything in the world and be at peace."

Beverly Barris' artwork is on display through the end of this month at the New Tampa Regional Library.

Go to www.beverlydesignstudio.com.

Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com.

[Last modified July 28, 2006, 06:19:13]