The Tennessee Valley Museum of Art opens the exhibition H. R. Lovell: Southern Visions at 1 p.m., Sunday, March 25. The museum is located on 511 N. Water St., Tuscumbia, Ala., and admission to the opening is free.

Southern Visions will be on display through May 4. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday and 1-3 p.m. on Sundays. Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for students during the week and free on Sundays.

The exhibition will feature works on loan from the collection of Quinton Horner and the Horner family as well as from the artist, H. R. Lovell. Horner, who inherited his late father’s collection, said much of the work has been out of the public eye for several years.

“It needs to be viewed by somebody other than just me,” Horner said.

Lovell was named Tennessee’s Artist-in-Residence for 2001 to 2003 by the Tennessee State Senate. He is a self-taught painter who uses a photorealistic style, often depicting the South and its people with strong composition and late afternoon light with deep shadows.

“I’ve always been an advocate of (Lovell)’s art,” said Horner. “There were times when I would sit for an hour and stare at one painting and look at the brushstrokes and think: how does someone do this? How does he pick just the right color and make those strokes look like rusted metal or hair?”

Horner’s appreciation of Lovell’s work has only been deepened by his relationship with the artist.

“Harold is part of his artwork, everything he paints has a story behind it that is personal to him,” Horner said. “The subject matter of the things he paints, if it’s of an old house, it’s a house from someone in his family.”

Horner related Lovell’s style to that of classic American painter Andrew Wyeth.

“He paints in the same medium,” he said. “Just like Wyeth painted the subject matters familiar to him, Harold paints subject matter that he relates to as well. His nostalgic paintings are reminders of simpler times.”