The Hastings Gallery in the Katharine L. Boyd Library at Sandhills Community College presents a new exhibit, “Mother and Son,” featuring the works of artists Evelyn Condon Dempsey and John Richard Dempsey III. The show opens with a reception on Thursday, March 24, from 4-6 p.m.

Evelyn Condon Dempsey, wife of Sandhills Community College President Dr. John Dempsey, began taking drawing and painting classes at Sandhills Community College more than a decade ago. She took classes under professors Denise Baker and Cliff Stuckey. She then studied for nine years with renowned painter and muralist Jeffrey Mims at Mims Studios, in Southern Pines. Lately, she has been creating still life, landscape and portrait paintings and drawings in her home studio and when traveling.

Son John Richard Dempsey III is a graduate of Pinecrest High School, an alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and studied at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy. Since 2002, Dempsey has been an apprentice to Ben Long. Long has an international reputation as a portrait painter and rare contemporary master of the ancient art of “true fresco” — painting directly on wet plaster walls. Dempsey helped establish The Fine Arts League of the Carolinas, a school for drawing, painting and sculpture in Asheville, where he has been teaching portrait, landscape, and still-life painting for the past nine years.

“Drawing is the key element of great painting,” he says. “The ability to describe the nuances of form with a simple tool such as a piece of charcoal prepares the painter for the problems which arise when attempting to display the subtle beauty of nature. Accurate demonstration of nature’s beauty is the hallmark of a great work.”

Admission to the Hastings Gallery is free and open to the public during regular library hours, Monday through Thursday, 7:45 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday, 7:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. This exhibit will run through April 21.