Meet the artist who gets Macon ready for the Cherry Blossom Festival, one window at a time

Peggy Whyte’s art gallery goes on tour every spring.

Her petals can be seen rolling down Rivoli and in rear-view mirrors up and down Poplar Street. Her trademark blossoms are on parade, even when the real ones aren’t blooming in Bloomfield.

Sometimes friends call to tell her they spotted her signature swirls on the back of a Chevrolet Suburban in Atlanta or dancing across a Dodge Durango in Savannah. She once got a text that her trademark Yoshinos had made the trip down to sunny Florida.

Those “Frequent Flower Miles” have added up over the years.

This month marks a milestone for Whyte’s signs and artwork business, “Petals by Peggy.” It is her 30th year on the front line of painting the town pink for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival.

For more than a generation, she has mixed white – another way to spell her last name – with red to create the color pink and unleash a full-floral flurry.

She has taken her brush to the windshields of so many cars, SUVs and minivans that she could probably paint them with her eyes closed.

Or maybe not. After all, people have been known to ask her if she sketches them in her dreams.

“I tell them no. I paint them all day long,’’ she said, laughing. “When I go to bed, I go to sleep.’’

Although her blossoms are seasonal, her artwork is anything but a one-hit wonder. Every fall, she and her daughter, Kelly, are commissioned to do illustrations of barnyard animals and autumn landscapes on the windows of buildings at the Georgia National Fairgrounds in Perry. 

They devote a large part of their November to detailing the rear windows of families with children in “The Nutcracker” ballet at Macon’s Grand Opera House every December. 

When Little League season finishes in the late spring and early summer, her artistry is summoned to spotlight all-star baseball and softball teams on all those caravans headed to state and district tournaments.

In advance of the Cherry Blossom Festival, she refers to her   consecutive weekends of car painting as “Let’s Get This Party Started,’’ with the final Saturday reserved for the “late bloomers.’’

She came to the U.S. from Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe) in 1970. She was a student at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she majored in art and social studies. She later lived in Canada, Guatemala and Ecuador before settling in Middle Georgia.

She moved to Macon and rented a garage apartment in 1980, three years before the first full run of the festival. She would drive  around town on the lookout for faded signs that needed some tender, loving care. All those cold calls paid off.

 “When I would see somebody who  had an old sign that looked drab, I would give them my card,’’ she said, 

Her business cards read: “Peggy’s Personal Touch.” On the back was printed: “You name it, I’ll try it.’’

“I got rid of that,’’ she said, laughing. “I got too many comments.’’

Among her first  window jobs was advertising everything from special car deals to low-interest financing for Riverside Ford and Tom Stimus, who gained fame for his hood-banging commercials at his Forsyth automobile dealership.

Her first gig with the Cherry Blossom Festival came after she was asked to provide painted blossoms on the city’s Cherry Blossom Express tour buses.

She was excited about the opportunity and even more thrilled when the local newspaper ran a photograph of her artwork on the buses. 

The beauty was in the details … except for an unintended alteration.

Cherry blossoms have five petals. She painted them with four.

“They looked like dogwoods,’’ she said. “People kept saying how embarrassing it was and asked me if I was going to add a petal. It was the end of the season. I told them I was just going to add some petals to the bottom like they had fallen off.’’

As it turned out, they proved to be as lucky as four-leaf clovers. She said it was “wonderful exposure” for her business. Soon, she was being recruited to stamp Yoshinos on storefront windows, banks and restaurants.

Members of the festival staff, including founder Carolyn Crayton, enlisted her talents to paint blossoms on their vehicles. That led to a partnership with the former Acme Paint and Decorating on Riverside Drive, which at the time was the festival’s “official” paint store.

The arty party “Think Pink” weekends to colorize car windows started in 1991. Folks would sometimes wait for more than an hour  to have dashes of pink, white, green and yellow splashed on the glass above their trunks and rear bumpers. There were times when the line stretched across the parking lot to Red Lobster, so close that folks could smell the shrimp frying and the cheddar bay biscuits cooking in the oven.

Her children, David and Kelly, were “born into the business.’’ She remembers keeping them in a swing and playpen next to where  she was painting a billboard in Warner Robins. Motorists would drive by and honk their horns.

When her kids were older, she would play a game with them in the car. Whenever they spotted those family blossoms rolling down the road, she would ask them who painted it.

“You did!!!’’ they would squeal with delight from the back seat.

In the early years, her customers could choose to have one blossom painted for $3 or two for $5. 

Now, Kelly “block” paints the windshields with her mom, with some help from grandsons Gideon, 8, and 5-year-old Felix. 

But it’s not a paint-by-number, assembly line approach.  She has expanded to offer a buffet line of customized painting.

“It has evolved from a blossom on the front and one on the back to somebody asking if I can put their child’s name or the name of their business on there,’’ Whyte said. “People actually design their car.’’

The four-petal miscue from yesteryear hasn’t been the only recorded blunder. She once wore a pair of tinted “blue blocker” sunglasses while she was painting cars, and all her cherry petals ended up as the shade of peach blossoms. 

Another time, a local business owner instructed her to paint vehicles parked in front of his building, and she inadvertently decorated a few cars of the customers.

And then there was the time a city worker requested she put a petal on his body in a place where the sun doesn’t shine.

 “A few weeks later, I saw some of his co-workers, and they told me the joke was on him,’’ she said. “He had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency gallbladder surgery, and he would not leave the house until his wife took the cherry blossom off his butt.’’

Whyte lives in Thomaston, where she owns and operates a bed and breakfast called Wisteria Way.

She has now beautified springtime across three generations. Some who watched her paint when they were children have grown up and now bring their children.

 “I want to keep this going,’’ she said. “I enjoy meeting new people. I’ve painted cars for mothers who are now grandmothers.’’

“She is dedicated and self-motivated to continue doing this,’’ daughter Kelly said. “No one would even suspect how old she is, but I think this lifestyle has kept her a lot younger.’’ 

Whyte includes paint removal as part of her business. There’s an art to removing the artwork from windows after the festival.

Some customers, however, are never ready to get out the erasers.  Like the loyalists who keep up their Christmas decorations long after the holidays, festival-goers have been known to let their blossoms linger.

“The older ladies like to keep them on there,’’ she said, “so they can find their cars at Walmart.’’