By David Rogers. BLOWING ROCK— Take a deep breath when you enter Edgewood Cottage to view Bernie Rosage’s paintings, on display July 6-12 as part of the Artists in Residence series hosted and produced by the Blowing Rock Historical Society.

“My motto is ‘Painter of Serenity from the Mountains to the Coast.’ When people look at my art, I want their blood pressure to go down,” Rosage told Blowing Rock News. “I want them to feel peace and calm. And that is also the feeling I want to get to when I am painting. That makes it a win-win!”

Rosage reported that he lives on the coast, in Jacksonville, North Carolina, nine months out of the year and in Blowing Rock the other three months.

Bass Lake, for me, is like Walden Pond was for Thoreau.

“My coastal adventures are usually on Topsail Island,” he said.

“Art is in me and it has got to come out,” said Rosage. “I’ve always been interested in art, from when I was a kid. In high school, I won a bunch of art awards.

“When I was a young man,” he added, “I got into photography because I wanted to create art fast, but as I grew older I wanted to slow things down again. I wanted that peace of slowing down. So my favorite way to paint is plein air, which means open air, outdoors. I’m not a hunter or fisherman, but I am a typical guy that loves to be outdoor, out in nature. So I’ll put that backpack on with my easel and I’ll hike up a mountain, across a field or around a lake. Bass Lake, for me, is what Walden Pond was for Thoreau.”

Rosage hasn’t drifted too far from home since he grew up in Onslow County, near Topsail Beach.

“Where I grew up… I can take you where all my grandaddies who fought in the American Revolution are buried. They weren’t Loyalists. They were Patriots! My family’s roots run deep in Onslow County,” said Rosage.

Focused on oils, Rosage explained that he is an art teacher at Jacksonville High School.

“I tell my students that I am not an art teacher. I am an artist, first, and a teacher second,” he explained, with emphasis. “I am just an artist who knows how to explain things.”

I don’t feel complete if I’m not doing art.

Since Rosage attended crosstown rival White Oak High School, he is the subject of friendly trash-talk from friends with whom he graduated.

“To this day, my friends rag on me about taking a job at Jacksonville!”

From high school, Rosage became a Pirate, enrolling at East Carolina University.

“In a way, I am self-taught about art but more accurately I am self-motivated to be taught because I have learned a lot from a lot of different artists. Some of them as old as Leonardo da Vinci, right on up to guys like Jeremy Sams and Scott Boyle, who are also North Carolina-based artists,” said Rosage.

So you studied under Leonardo da Vinci?

Laughing, “Yeah, I’m looking pretty good for my age!”

Rosage said that roughly 95 percent of his work is in oils, but occasionally he’ll veer into acrylics and gouache mediums.

“In my teaching role at the high school, I teach all levels of art, different mediums and disciplines,” he said. “Techniques.”

From the 1980s and into the 1990s, Rosage explained that he and his wife had a photography studio for many years

“But I have always been an artist and interested in art,” he said. “It has always been a part of my life. I don’t feel complete if I am not doing art. My students will make fun of me sometimes because I know nothing about pop culture. I’m just not into it. They’ll ask if I saw something on TV and I have to say, ‘I don’t watch TV. I’m painting!'”

Anywhere on the Blue Ridge Parkway between Rough Ridge on Grandfather Mountain and Deep Gap, you might just find Bernie Rosage creating art.

“That’s my ‘studio’, but I also like painting in downtown Blowing Rock, not just nature scenes,” he said.