Area residents are accustomed to watching Jim Schultz use a wrench as he plies his craft beneath the hood of a car. What they may not know is that those same hands wield a paintbrush just as effectively.

Since childhood, Schultz has produced works of art worthy of an exhibit, ranging from those first drawings displayed on his mom's refrigerator door to the two works currently hanging in the "Art in the Woods" exhibition at Corporate Woods in Overland Park.

Although he doesn't remember when he first indicated an interest in art, he does recall producing something with his crayons and receiving a pat on the back for his efforts. Pleased, he kept working and practicing so that he could keep earning those pats on the back.

One of the rural landscape paintings done by Jim Schultz is pictured.

"I think," Schultz said, "I paint because of the accolades. You try to do something that's just a little unique to make yourself special."

In recent years, he has earned recognition from the Kansas Watercolor Society by having his works displayed in seven of their annual state exhibitions and from the International Watercolor Media by having his painting, "Wired," selected for the cover of the 2000 invitation.

He has also frequently displayed his work in other local and regional shows and was once featured in a Kansas City Magazine article by Don Lambert.

Schultz, a member of the Bonner Springs High School Class of 1970, finds it difficult to define his style. He likes to "flip flop" between producing airbrushed acrylics and watercolors.

His airbrushed pieces tend to be "pretty pictures" because that technique produces softness, thus allowing him to capture the serenity of natural settings.

He has selected watercolors, however, to share his wry sense of humor. He especially enjoys demonstrating life's ironies by painting billboards that are seemingly in contrast with their surroundings.

As he drives, his eye is always searching for that incongruity.

One of his favorite memories is when he saw a billboard looming large with the encouraging message of "Be a Winner!" As he got closer, he was amused to find that the sign was in the midst of a junkyard filled with wrecked and rusted car bodies.

Schultz was inspired to paint "Wired" after seeing an ad for the Kansas Power & Light Company, with the now famous warning, "Don't go near the wires!"

His work presents the billboard by a power distribution plant with electric lines running in all directions. The billboard has its own wires prominently displayed.

At one point, some of the power plant's wires disappear behind the sign, but seem to be continued by the lines in the billboard. A jurist who selected "Wired" for the exhibition said it had attracted him because it was something he never would have painted himself.

Shultz said he looks at billboards to come up with paintings like these.

"One day a predominantly blue billboard caught my eye," Schultz said. "There was a blue car parked in front of it. Most of the paper on the billboard had been stripped away, but there was a big letter B with only the letters L, E and W stretched across the sign.

Most people would miss that. They might see parts of it. Maybe they'd see the letters, but they might not connect them to the car. It's all about observation."

Such acute observation requires a quick mind as well as a quick eye. As he was nearing Lawrence one day, Schultz noted a billboard with most of the message worn away. A dominant letter O remained.

While he was committing that scene to memory, a sky writing plane appeared just above the sign. The letter it was forming at the time was, naturally, the letter O.

He, also, likes billboards because they are frequently ragged with strips of paper hanging loosely and flapping in the wind.

"It's so torn up that at first you can't make heads or tails out of it, so it's an abstract. It is a natural abstract piece," Schultz said. "It's not just natural patterns, and it's not completely manmade. It is the result of decay and neglect, much like what happens to some of our urban communities. I can get really philosophical about billboards."

Schultz thinks that his style has been influenced more by photographers than by other painters because he does representational work.

"I had taken a plein-air class with Bob Sudlow, who paints a lot of Kansas scenes in oil on location," Schultz said.

He explained that this technique is engaged mainly in representing the effects of outdoor light and atmosphere and, of course, demands that the artist be on site to absorb those effects.

"We would be out in the Flint Hills with the wind blowing hard enough to produce a wind chill of below zero" he said.

That's when he decided that it wasn't where he wanted to be; he wanted to be in a comfortable studio. This meant, of course, that he needed references from which to get ideas.

"I used materials from magazines and calendars and would take ideas from different photos and make them into something of my own," he said. "But I had to be careful not to infringe on another artist's creativity, so I decided to start photographing my own reference materials."

Now when he travels, Schultz likes to stop whenever he wants so that he can grab his camera to record a fascinating scene, a spectacular display of light, or a humorous billboard.

"He will go out to a site and take photos from several different angles," his wife, Joyce, said. "Then he will inevitably do a piece from an angle that no one could possibly have seen in the same way. Or he may move something or add something that wasn't actually in that spot."

She refers to pictures he took while atop the Hancock Building in Chicago. He had spotted a pool on a neighboring roof with people in chaise lounges at the water's edge.

Schultz works on his next piece.

A man in the middle of the group was lying with his arms outstretched. Several serving trays, glasses and plates were scattered about.

Once Schultz had his pictures and had time to absorb the details, he noticed that a plate on the ground just above the man's head resembled a halo. He then produced his take on the Last Supper, complete with a blurred vision of a swimmer underwater representing the ascension.

"That's artistic license," Schultz said.

He also has done some Aspen trees from such an angle that the viewer feels as though he or she is lying on the ground and looking straight up.

"Most landscapes, of course, are pretty representational, pretty much as is," Schultz said. "Oh, you change some color, you may move things around, but it still resembles what you see."

"You can, if you want, make some unrealistic changes," he said, "such as having a creek run uphill or giving a tree an atypical color. Such manipulations involve the viewer in the painting."

Each medium with which Schultz works demands something different from the artist. Working with oils and acrylics, for instance, requires a lot of upkeep.

Watercolor is unforgiving, however. "If you make a mistake, you are so limited as to what you can do to correct it. Oil and pastels are opaque enough that you can continue to paint over something and still salvage a painting. Not so with watercolors."

Schultz, who works at Stephan's Amoco, finds it difficult to explain his interest in mechanics and painting. He is certain, however, that it has something to do with problem solving.

"To take a three-dimensional image that you see, put it on a flat surface and try to make it a two-dimensional image, you have to solve certain problems. You have to squash it. You have to expand it. You have to make that mental image fit.

"It's the same process of elimination that you use in solving mechanical problems," he said.

The son of Ernst and Ruth, Schultz grew up in an artistic family. Everyone had a skill or talent that encouraged self-expression.

"We didn't have a TV in our house until I was ten years old," he said. Consequently, Schultz was encouraged to entertain himself by practicing his drawing.

In fact, Schultz did only drawings until he started studying at the University of Kansas. Prior to that, he had concentrated on charcoal, pastel and pencil drawings.

Well aware that natural talent usually starts to evolve at an early age, Schultz encourages parents to let budding artists concentrate on simple drawings at first.

Schultz would eventually like to focus on his art, but he knows that being able to support oneself on fine art is rare.

"It's difficult to be an artist who makes a living at being an artist," Joyce said. "It's a struggle to get the word out on your pieces, to find a market for them and to get a gallery that meets your needs.

"One jurist told us that the way she was able to make a profit was by doing decorative art, or 'sofa art,' for years until she had accumulated enough money to change completely and do what she wanted."

Although profit is tempting, Schultz still finds it hard to let a piece go to a new owner.

"There are certain pieces I will never sell because they are sort of like my diaries," Schultz said. "They represent either a particular time in my life that reminds me of what was going on at the time, or they represent something new or different that I was trying."

In the future, Schultz would love to do a large, steel sculpture.

First, however, he needs to clean off that refrigerator door so that it will be empty when he starts to hang the drawings of their first child that he and Joyce are expecting in the fall.