The Suffolk Art League, in cooperation with the Suffolk Art Gallery, will exhibit “Drawings and Paintings by Hank Pugh” July 29 to Aug. 25.

Pugh was the first-place winner of the Suffolk Art League’s 2016 Annual Juried Exhibition, which earned him the one-person show at the gallery.

Commenting on Pugh’s two watercolor paintings and one charcoal drawing, juror Michael Pierce stated, “This was the clear winner for me. Using traditional watercolor and drawing media in a traditional manner to depict ‘landscape’ scenes with contemporary buildings surprised me… I am always in awe of artists who paint what’s right in front of them.”

This exhibit will include more than 50 of Pugh’s paintings and drawings.

Pugh was born in 1943, a self-described “trouble maker the world had more than enough of.”

Like every child, he started with coloring books and then took art in local schools. His “real art training” started with a local artist named Lindsay Ocheltree at Ocheltree Art Center.

He went on to study painting and watercolor at Old Dominion College (now University) with Charles K. Sibley. Pugh attended Gallaudet College, where he’d planned to take further art courses but struggled with academics.

For 15 years, Pugh was a sidewalk artist at Military Circle shopping mall, drawing and selling many charcoal portraits. He also did watercolor paintings of homes on commission, plus a few portraits of pets.

Pugh was one of the early artists to have a studio in the d’ART Center in downtown Norfolk and continues to work from his studio there. The d’ART Center is now located on Duke Street.

In addition to Pugh’s work, the gallery will feature the show “American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.”

American art includes an 18^th-century portrait that captures the pride of a citizen in the newly formed United States, a landscape that presents a stunning vista of the American West, a still life that flaunts the wealth of the Gilded Age and an abstract composition that challenges the eye to dance with it across the canvas.

American art presents a rich and varied visual expression of America’s history and the people and ideas that shaped it. The works represented in “American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts” are just a small sampling of the museum’s collection of our nation’s creative heritage.

This educational exhibition presents a wide variety of American artists, ranging from Charles Willson Peale to Eastman Johnson to Mary Cassatt to Georgia O’Keeffe to Stuart Davis.

The works are selected from the permanent collections at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

There will be an opening and “Meet the Artist Reception” from 4 to 6 p.m. July 29 at the Suffolk Art Gallery, 118 Bosley Ave. The reception is free and open to the public.

Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, call the art league office at 925-0448.