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Pretty as a picture never was good enough for artist Marian Osher. Whether it's coming to grips with a crippling fear or communicating an expanding awareness, the Rockville resident's work is highly personal. Her exhibit "Art Matters" at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville is a 68-piece retrospective on the prints and paintings she has created during the past decade.

Osher's collection "Fearless Flying!" is on view in the church's long entrance corridor. New York City's Ceres Gallery first showed its component 10 aerial landscapes in 2010. The bird's eye views of mountains, coastlines and snow covered fields are calm and almost dreamlike in their hazy layers of acrylic paint. But as serene as it might appear, Osher created "Fearless Flying!" to combat her post-9/11 concerns about air travel. On Sept. 11, 2001, Osher was returning from Amsterdam when her plane was rerouted to Halifax, Canada, because of "weather problems." She and 1,200 other travelers were taken to an exhibition center, where she says her Canadian hosts did everything they could to make them comfortable.

Although she would avoid flight for the next three years, Osher eventually relented because both her son and daughter were living on the West Coast. These oil paintings constituted a healing process from which Osher hopes others can draw strength.

"I think when you face your fears, that helps you to overcome some of your limitations and if you face one fear, then it helps you with other fears," she says. "That's why I thought ‘Fearless Flying!' was an important series of work, [not only] because it was cathartic for me, but [also because] it might help other people with their other fears," she says.

The five-piece series "Change," on display in the church's lobby, symbolizes the story of Osher's parents. The acrylic paintings were originally black-and-white illustrations that complemented the chapters of "Love the Brave World," a book of poetry by Osher's mother, the late Ruth Allen Siskind. Each circular painting includes images of the sun, moon, hands and a tree at the center. The piece "The Moon is You" uses bright colors and hands rising up to a young tree to give the impression of a budding relationship, whereas the dark ambience and withered tree in "Tears of Rain" alludes to the loss of Osher's father.

A panel in each section of the exhibit offers the artist's written explanation of her work, as well as poems by her mother that she feels complement the art.

"Every room or section has a written explanation of what she has or is doing," says Laura Huff, who chairs the church's aesthetics committee. "I don't think you need to, but it does help a lot. I think her work is pretty self-explanatory, but it's always interesting to read what she had in mind, what her goal was, when she produced these things."

Huff and Osher have a history; both are printmakers who were among the founders of the Washington Printmakers Gallery in 1985. Huff believes the church was an appropriate venue to show the many years-worth of work Osher wanted to exhibit.

"We cover four good-sized spaces. There's no other gallery in this whole area that comes close to what we can offer in hanging space for artwork," Huff says.

Osher's work also touches on environmental consciousness and issues. The selection of monotypes titled "eyetinerary," which debuted at Washington Printmakers Gallery in 2009, is a combination of still lifes based on sketches Osher made at her Rockville and Bethany Beach homes. In each instance, whether it's the simple forestry of a trail in Rockville the artist regularly walks or a marshy stream near the beach, Osher says these pieces emphasize the beauty that can be found in everyday scenery if one takes the time to stop and look. The notion to "stop and smell the roses" occurred to her while sipping a cup of chai tea at a restaurant on Nelson Street in Rockville in 1997.

"I was living a kind of hectic crazy life at that time, doing too much," she recalls. "And when I had that cup of tea, it was 15 minutes of ‘ah' and I said, ‘That feels so good, I want to feel that way more often' so I started changing my life and simplifying."

That was when, she adds, "I started mediating and I started changing my diet, and then I decided I didn't want to have the toxicity of solvents and oils and all that stuff and I found other media."

Osher's work references not only the beauty of nature, but the dangers threatening it as well. Much of her work in the church's Founder's Hall is devoted to problems facing the environment. "Scars" showed cases of mountaintop removal, and "Survivors" depicts the dire situation facing the fewer than 3,000 free-roaming buffalo in Yellowstone National Park.

Osher says her environmental consciousness was sparked in 2003 when she visited her son, Josh Osher, in Montana. He was working as a coordinator for the Buffalo Field Campaign, an organization that attempts to protect free roaming buffalo that wander out of Yellowstone Park from hazing or slaughter.

Osher thinks it's important to be able to discuss the issues she addresses in her art.

"I didn't just make up pictures. I have some other pieces, for instance, about inappropriate forest fire suppression. Certain fires are good to have in a forest because they clean out the underneath stuff so that there aren't the big destructive fires and then you've got to leave the stick so you can regenerate the forest," Osher says. "I read a 294-page book called ‘The Forest Reader' and I studied these things so that when I give my shows I can talk about these issues and then I can help raise awareness. It's not only about making art, it's about sharing."

Frank Wright, a George Washington University professor who taught Osher in his graduate printmaking and graphics program in the early 1970s, noticed that even then, Osher's artwork was connected to her personal beliefs.

"She has a philosophical extension to her printmaking," he observes. "And therefore printmaking is always a reflection of her philosophy."

Wright describes Osher as a "tenacious" student who was passionate about her work. Because he was new to the university at the time, he also admits to giving her a too-demanding thesis assignment. Still, he recalls, Osher rose to the occasion.

"It was one of the best theses that ever came out of the George Washington art department without question, and it was used as a model for other students," Wright says.

Since that time, Osher has become a thriving artist whose work has been exhibited everywhere from Moscow to New York City. See what 10 years worth looks like at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rockville.

tforhecz@gazette.net

Marian Osher's exhibit "Art Matters" is on view through Feb. 6 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, 100 Welsh Park Drive, Rockville. Call 301-762-7666 or visit www.uucr.org.