Artists Pam Peacock and RYSHU, aka Ryan Shuckhart, pose with their accomplished murals for Atlanta Crossroads Mural Fest in July of 2024. (Images courtesy the artist)
To say that artwork has at all times been essential to artistic energy couple Pam Peacock and Ryan Shuckhart is perhaps an understatement.
Initially from Southern California, Peacock visited Atlanta in 2015 as she was contemplating a transfer to Georgia’s burgeoning capital. A graphic designer and artist at coronary heart, one of many very first issues she did was attend the showy East Atlanta Strut. There, amidst the ocean of pop-up tents and costumed paraders, she visited a sales space that Ryan was sharing with a good friend of his.
Though no sparks flew at that preliminary assembly, Peacock made an enduring impression on Shuckhart. “The following 12 months, after I’d moved right here, I went to the Strut once more, and Ryan acknowledged me from a good friend’s social media presence,” she recalled.
Shuckhart, aka RYSHU, a graphic designer and painter who’s been lively within the Atlanta arts scene for 15-plus years, lastly struck up a dialog. From there, a friendship slowly developed over a number of years, throughout which the pair bumped into one another at artwork reveals and group occasions with mutual associates till 2018, when the 2 began courting. Or, as Shuckhart places it, “I lastly bought her to go on a mountain climbing date with me.” Peacock didn’t have a automotive, and Shuckhart supplied to drive. “She appeared actually cool, and I used to be a giant hiker on the time.”
He took her to Arabia Mountain in Stonecrest, the place the 2 chatted it up on the rocky, moon-like outcrop and shortly found that that they had much more in widespread than simply artwork. Since then, the 2 have been just about inseparable, as a pair and as now-established regulars within the Atlanta arts scene.
It’s simple to catch their work round city, whether or not from the collaborative and colourful mural they did along with the Lotus Eaters Membership at Westview Nook Grocery to the painted electrical bins accomplished in 2022 for the Decatur Arts Alliance in downtown Decatur. Peacock and Shuckhart every painted a field in addition to aiding the opposite with their imaginative and prescient — Shuckhart opted for a whimsical, virtually storybook owl surrounded by red-and-blue-eyed woodland creatures, and Peacock depicted a deep-blue and purple house scene resembling an ocean-scape with mechanical sharks. The painted bins stay unchanged to this present day.
“We work collectively very effectively, doing paintings and managing our lives,” mentioned Shuckhart. “We’re very considerate about what the opposite one is doing. And that’s why we’re so good at collaborating on the murals — as a result of we perceive what that particular person must get by way of this.”
Nowadays, seven years after that preliminary Arabia Mountain meet-up, the couple lives and works collectively in a comfortable Morningside rental with a single studio, an area so small the eating room, lounge, and visitor room are all used as studio house. As any working artistic is aware of nowadays, the work-art-life steadiness (particularly when in a dedicated relationship) generally is a problem to take care of.
Along with their creative pursuits, Peacock works full-time as a senior designer for iHeartPodcasts, and Shuckhart is a contract graphic designer, largely working for a wide range of corporations. Nevertheless, when the pair is requested about any bickering over artistic variations, or a seven-year artistic itch, they collectively shrug it off.
“We’re good at letting the opposite particular person take the lead when it’s their flip,” defined Peacock. “We’ll each be in the identical group reveals typically, and my dad requested me as soon as if Ryan or I ever really feel jealous [of each other’s success]. And I believed concerning the reply as actually as potential, and, no, we’re simply completely satisfied for one another and really supportive of one another.”
Moreover, whereas the pair has collaborated on some giant public murals — items that require additional arms — they’ve additionally caught to their particular person tasks and careers as artists, supporting and giving house when wanted. There could also be no artwork to discovering the thoughts’s building within the face, as Macbeth mentioned, however there could also be one thing to discovering the center’s building in Peacock’s and Shuckhart’s artwork.
Wanting over their oeuvre, it’s simple to see how the couple bonded by way of a thematic and complementary symmetry woven by way of their work: a constant love of animals and conceptual playfulness — Shuckhart together with his terrestrial tableaus full of cartoon-like creatures and calming earth tones, and Peacock along with her expansive aquatic-interstellar escapes forged in dramatic, eye-candy blues, purples and pastels. Considered collectively, their work speaks to 1 one other as a dialog between associates and lovers.
By means of artistic and emotional help, and a little bit give-and-take, Peacock and Shuckhart make it work.
Talking of, Shuckhart has been getting ready for an upcoming present at Empire Arts Gallery (the place Peacock has additionally exhibited), which can open on September 6. Referred to as Return to Terra Flora, the exhibition is a sequel to a present from 2019 the place Shuckhart exhibited with Atlanta artists Daniel Curran and Rachel De Urioste. The trio will reunite for this upcoming exhibition.
After finishing a project-heavy 2024, Peacock lately labored on illustrations for a coloring e-book fundraiser on the Avondale Arts Alliance and presently has a bit hanging at ABV Gallery’s Locals Solely group exhibition by way of August 3. The work is sweetly entitled “An Ode to Arabia Mountain” as a nod to her enduring love for the positioning and its significance to her private story.
“It’s about pushing every up as an alternative of pushing one another down,” mentioned Shuckhart. “It makes our relationship stronger. It’s actually motivating, too, being round one other one who has that artistic vitality. It retains me enthusiastic about making my artwork.”
Peacock agrees. “It’s extra collaboration over competitors, and there’s room for everybody. The extra all of us help one another, the higher all people will get to do.”
You’ve heard of affection at first sight, however for Peacock and Shuckhart, it’s extra like love at first artwork.
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Jeff Dingler is an Atlanta-based creator and entertainer. A graduate of Skidmore School with an MFA in artistic writing from Hollins College, he’s written for New York Journal, The Washington Submit, The New York Occasions, Tiny Love, Newsweek, WIRED, Salmagundi and Flash Fiction Journal. Extra info at jeffdingler.org.