The Black Heritage Gallery Five Artist Show is down to four artists, but not lacking in soulful expression of life using art.

Stacy Guillry Ross is one of the four artists whose work is on display. “I think I started drawing when I was 5,” she said. “I left art, a marriage, and my sketchpad behind, and didn’t pick up that form of self expression  again until 2020. That’s when my daughter found my sketchpad from 1997. She’s 30. In it was a bird. So, I decided to turn it into a painting, which I titled “The Pretty Songwriter.” It really took me out of a dark place.”

Misty Beitel’s favorite piece is also a feathered creature, an owl, painted half in darkness.

“I guess it’s basically the way I look at things,” she said. “I have a heart condition that can’t be fixed. What can’t be fixed is represented by the dark.”

Beitel was told by the medical community that she has five years to live. That was four years ago.

“I want to live everyday as though it could be my last,” she said. “Painting soothes me,” she said. “It eases my mind. It’s a distraction from the darkness.”

Other artists in the show  are Titus Bradford and Alma Camara.

The Black Heritage Gallery, a project of Black Heritage Festival of Louisiana, opened on June 28, 2001 with a grant from the Junior League of Lake Charles. The opening exhibit honored the legends of the national Negro leagues and the hometown heroes of Southwest Louisiana. Located in historic Central School, the gallery is among the 26 initial sites on Louisiana’s African-Amerian Heritage Trail that was announced by Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landriew in February 2008.

Since its inception, the gallery has showcased emerging and mid-career artists at its original location in Central School Arts & Humanities Center. In December 2019, the Gallery is projected to move into its new location at Historic City Hall Arts & Cultural Center. There are six exhibits a year that hang for 7 weeks. A vision of Stella Miller and Frankie Lane, the gallery is the only institution dedicated to the arts and culture of African-Americans in Southwest Louisiana.