Imaginations • Pflugerville

Imaginations • Pflugerville

By Terry Hanley Friday, 07 November 2008

Britta Herzog has been honing her craft as an artist since her younger days of getting in trouble for passing horse sketches to friends in second grade. Today, Herzog paints portraits and still-life pictures with oils and pastels, which she sells at her art gallery and gift shop, Imaginations.

Before 1999 when Herzog purchased the building where Imaginations is located on Pecan Street in Pflugerville, she was a member of an artist co-op on Burnet Road in Austin where she worked in a 10- by 10-foot space with five other painters. However, she longed to have her own gallery. She said it made sense to open one in Pflugerville because she lives just outside the city limits and her husband’s business, Herzog Foundation Drilling, is there.

“I needed painting space,” Herzog said. “And it was a great opportunity for me to have not just a painting space, but to have my own gallery.”

Though she enjoyed dabbling in art since childhood, Herzog did not have formal training until she was 40 years old when, after a brief stint in a bowling league, she enrolled in art classes at Austin Community College. A self-professed lack of bowling skills left her pondering how she could spend her time and money more productively.

“I decided okay, I am going to take this money that I have been spending on this bad habit and I am going to go to ACC and take some art classes,” Herzog said. “So that’s what I did.”

Herzog said she learned a lot during her classroom experience at ACC, but still felt she did not know the basics of painting. So she began taking lessons from Austin artist Char Eppright, who taught her the basics of oil painting and later convinced her to try pastels. Herzog said that while she enjoys working with pastels, oil painting is her passion.

After seven years of study under Eppright, Herzog began focusing on human portraits, pet portraits and still lifes, which she has painted for more than 15 years. She paints commissioned portraits for customers and said she prefers working from real life rather than photographs. Herzog charges $150 for pet portraits and $75 per hour for all other work.

She was commissioned in 2001 by Rob Brown, who is the husband of the Greater Pflugerville Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Patricia Gervin-Brown, to create a montage highlighting Pflugerville’s diverse architectural features as a gift to his wife. The 30- by 36-inch montage hangs in Gervin-Brown’s office at the chamber.

More than art

Imaginations was known as Pflugerville Country Gallery until January, when owner Britta Herzog decided to change the studio’s name to attract more customers.

“I realized that people are not going to buy art every day, or every week, or every month, so I started thinking about what to do to expand it,” Herzog said. “And I wanted something that wasn’t going to take up a lot of wall space, and jewelry just happened to fit the bill. And what woman doesn’t like jewelry? So I started with that, and then it just kind of grew into gifts.”

Imaginations features an array of items created by local artisans, including:

• Candleholders and candle bridges
• Decorative wine bottle stoppers
• Floral arrangements
• Glassware
• Gemstone, sterling silver and other fine jewelry
• Greenleaf aroma oils, oil lamps and lotions
• Handcrafted cutting boards, wooden pens and fan pulls
• Monogramming
• Nightlights
• Pottery
• Paintings and commissioned portraits
• UT and Texas A&M business card holders

301 W. Pecan St., 251-5329, www.brittaherzog.com