Josette Urso and Peter Schroth live only a few stories above the chaos of Manhattan streets, but hints of the peaceful landscapes they have seen together still surround them. Splashes of color from dozens of Urso's tiny landscape paintings cover one wall of her studio adjoining their apartment. Seated side by side, Urso, 45, and Schroth, 49, said recently that they were eager to see their works hang together at last. An exhibit opening at the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art today gives visitors a chance to see landscapes from around the world through this married couple's eyes. They see the same images, but their responses are different. He's more literal. She's more abstract. It's a story many couples might tell. But Urso and Schroth do it with paint. The exhibit is a 10-year retrospective of their plein air paintings. It marks the first time the artists have shown their work together, and the first time Leepa-Rattner has devoted an exhibit to a couple. "The whole idea of two artists visiting the same place but having two different aesthetics seemed like a very interesting approach," said museum director Lynn Whitelaw, who came up with the idea for the joint exhibit. For the next seven weeks, paintings of Spain, Arizona, Ireland, Maine and Connecticut will line the walls of two exhibit halls in the museum, which is on the St. Petersburg College campus in Tarpon Springs. While Urso and Schroth often travel together, they work separately both in the field and at home. Schroth's studio is in Jersey City, N.J. He can look out the window and see the Manhattan skyline. "This is nice and big," he said, gesturing toward Urso's spacious studio, "but I've got the view." Urso said she loves living near her studio. "Every waking moment I'm with my work," she said. The couple moved to New York soon after they met about two decades ago at the University of South Florida. Urso, a Tampa native, was completing her master's degree in fine arts and Schroth was a young faculty member. Since then, they have worked to make their marks in a rapidly changing artistic environment that is ideal and stimulating one moment, discouraging and competitive the next. In addition to landscape paintings, Urso also creates a range of other artwork, including mixed media collages and jewelry. She has maintained her Tampa ties, showing regularly at galleries in the area in addition to other shows in New York and around the world. Returning to Florida this weekend for the show's opening will be a welcome respite, they said. "It's much calmer down there," Schroth said. Urso nodded in agreement. "Life up here is just so intense," she said, "so insane." But even when they escape the clamor of New York, intensity follows. Traveling across the country or around the world to paint landscape paintings, they said, is at once satisfying and stressful. "When I sit down, I really don't know what's going to happen, and I enjoy that," Urso said. They prop up their easels outside and paint, day in and day out. Both of them work quickly to capture what they see. As the exhibit's title, "One View/Two Visions," implies, they may look at the same place and produce very distinct works. "I'm putting together all sorts of aspects of the place and reconfiguring them," Urso said of her work. "The things I look for in a place are not always visually apparent. I'm trying to find that other thing, the spirit, the sense of the place." When she is painting a landscape, Urso said, surrounding sounds and the way the weather feels are just as important as the image before her. Schroth said he does not try to replicate the image before him with photographic exactness, but he remains "very much inspired by what things look like." "His works tend to be more finished," Whitelaw said, "and a real attempt to capture that time and place and location." Lately, Schroth said, he has tried to zoom in on subjects in his paintings. In addition to broader scenes, the exhibit also will include several recent paintings that focus on dense foliage or rocks in water. Even though they have different approaches to painting, they are collaborating to teach a watercolor landscape workshop at the museum. "We'll just wander around the campus and see how it unfolds," Urso said. Then they'll return to the Big Apple, leaving the peaceful Florida landscapes behind. Catherine E. Shoichet can be reached at cshoichetsptimes.com or (727) 771-4307. IF YOU GO "One View/Two Visions: Plein air paintings by Josette Urso and Peter Schroth" Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, 600 Klosterman Road, Tarpon Springs. Today through March 6. Open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m, Thursday until 9 p.m. and Sunday, 1-5 p.m. (727) 712-5762, www.spcollege.edu/museum.