Courtesy of Jill Skidmore

Jill Skidmore is best-known for painting portraits and landscapes on rocks — such as her paintings of the Giles County Courthouse (below) and an eagle (above).

AMY MATZKE-FAWCETT The Roanoke Times

Jill Skidmore, a clerk at the Pearisburg library, shows one of her paintings of the Giles County Courthouse that she hangs in her home. Skidmore donates most of her work to the Giles County Relay for Life Team or the local Lord's Acre sale for fundraisers.

PEARISBURG -- Many people know Jill Skidmore as the helpful clerk at the Pearisburg library, but others think she's a local art treasure.

She has painted T-shirts, rocking horses and computer mouse pads. But she's best-known for painting portraits and landscapes on rocks, and for her original paintings of the Giles County Courthouse and Pearisburg Library, noting Pearisburg's bicentennial.

Many locals recognize Skidmore's artwork or even own something she has painted, but Skidmore would never tell anyone that, said Betsy Steenken of Pearisburg, a library regular who noticed Skidmore's artwork displayed.

Steenken said she knows Skidmore only through their talks at the library but always likes to look at her work displayed there.

"I saw the things she had done, and I think she's very talented," Steenken said. "I just kept telling her how wonderful what she had done was, and she's so modest, so she said it's nothing."

Skidmore donates most of her work to the Giles County Relay for Life Team or the local Lord's Acre sale for fundraisers.

"She doesn't take any credit for it at all, she's so modest about it," said Sandra Robertson, library director. "We finally talked her into keeping enough of the money to cover expenses [for art supplies]."

Skidmore started painting in 1972 as a stress release, she said.

"I didn't really ever want to paint, but it helps," Skidmore said. "Anytime I have a problem, I paint."

While visiting a fair in West Virginia with her husband, Edward, she noticed a vendor who painted on rocks, and thought she might try it, she said.

"I thought, 'Well, I can probably do that,' " Skidmore said.

She started painting various scenes on rocks and laying them out in her garden, not thinking much of it until a neighbor's young daughter liked one so much that she stole it.

The neighbor returned the rock, but neighbors started asking Skidmore to paint specialty scenes or to buy her rock paintings -- and her reputation grew from there.

Library patrons often notice Skidmore's artwork displayed inside, Robertson said.

"We have quite a few people to compliment her artwork," Robertson said. "People who don't know her will ask about it, and local people who know her will always ask, 'Does Jill have anything new?' or 'What's Jill been up to lately?' "

Skidmore draws inspiration for her rock paintings from photos, magazines, plaques and various things she comes across.

"Most are parts of three or four pictures," Skidmore said. "I like the sky in one, so I'll use that, and I'll like the tree from this one, so I'll use that."

Every once in a while, she will paint a religious scene. But her favorite is a painting she did of her grandmother a few months before she died in 1989.

Skidmore credits her family and friends with her creativity -- her mother painted, her father taught her to play guitar, and her grandmother instilled her love of crafts.

"I'm a little bit of everyone I've known and loved," she said.