Cover Artist: Nan Davis

By Gina Malone

A calling to art as a life path did not come early to Nan Davis. “Frankly,” she says, “it has been a long and winding road. A career was something practical like teaching or nursing and I was not interested in that. I did not have an artist model in my life. I always just made art—no greater reason than because it was fun.”

She grew up in Greenville, SC, where she was always working on an art or craft project. When she was in college at Georgia State University, someone gave her a nudge in the right direction. “A wonderful, perceptive friend saw something in me and asked me to create two large important projects for him,” Davis says. “Just out of the blue, he handed me these art projects that had nothing to do with anything I had ever done, and he had complete confidence that I could do them. No micromanaging, just told me the scope of the projects and then he left it alone and let me figure it out.”

At this time, she was in the last years at the university and needed to declare a major. “I could not get interested in one of the ‘practical’ choices, so I declared Fine Art as my major,” she says. Though she admits she still had no idea how art would lead to a lucrative career, she began to work at it while still living in Atlanta. When a divorce put “survival” at the forefront of her mind, she worked on projects for interior designers and did some graphic design projects. “The studio I had then was fabulous,” she says. “It was a very large classroom in an old school building. It was there that I was introduced to other artists in various mediums who were really focused on art as their lifestyle and income. I was Level 101 then, but I had been bitten by the bug to create.”

Then, having decided to leave Atlanta, she sought a place in which to settle and create. She drove through Western North Carolina, stopping in small towns and calling companies about jobs. Her search ended when she reached Asheville and found a secure job that allowed her to purchase a home. She had a plan. “I worked my day job, and at night and on the weekends I created,” she says. “I tried all kinds of things, all mediums; my ideas and focus were scattered, but it was all in preparation for the day that I would be able to create art full-time. I had small shows of my work at my home; I had a show in a lawyer’s office, at friend’s homes, at Asheville School. Time flies, and 25 years after I started my day job, I left and moved into NorthLight Studios in the River Arts District. I was in heaven.”

As it turned out, Asheville was the perfect place of inspiration for her paintings. “Over the years what I have found about myself is that I respond greatly to color and to the WNC mountains and trails,” Davis says. “Trails full of trees and foliage and light streaming through. Water from ponds and lakes and rivers. And color—that is extremely important.”

She sees her art as her own interpretation of the beauty before her, and, thus, her color palette is often not the typical hues associated with nature. “Color is joy, and that is what I feel when I am putting beautiful colors together,” she says. “My desire is to use the landscape as a familiar base to give the viewer a hint of the subject and then let the color and texture and all the scrapes and scratches made from the knives pull them in to look again and again.”

Fellow artist Ann Litrel was Davis’ studio mate in Decatur, GA, and remains a friend. “Nan launches into every canvas like it’s an adventure,” Litrel says, “with whatever tool she has at hand—brush, fingers, cloth, palette knife. What emerges in each painting is a beautifully textured world that is unmistakably hers, a place where trees and water and mountains dissolve into radiant light and color. I find myself compelled to return again and again to be in that world.”

Davis still explores, taking chances with techniques and finding new ways of expressing herself on canvas. “I am excited when a painting is purchased and the client sends me a photo of it on a wall in their home,” Davis says. “They are excited, it is meaningful to them and I am a part of that.”

During COVID, she found herself frustrated and wanting to take it out on a 4’ x 5’ canvas she had. “I decided that I would paint completely freely, without thinking about any end results—because at that point we did not know what was going to be happening,” Davis says. “It was a happy experience for me and I love the results.” That painting became Blackbird Singing, and she realized that she had developed an attachment to it. “I had been talking to my dear friend about this, telling her I knew it would sell and I needed the money, but that I didn’t want to sell it. A couple of weeks later she called and said she had decided that she would buy it. I was happy that it would have a good home, but really feeling that I did not want to let it go. She paid me for the painting, and then told me she was giving it to me for my birthday! I have that painting in my home in a very prominent place and I love it and love the generosity of my friend.”

Learn more at NanDavisArt.com, and follow on Instagram and Facebook @NanDavisArt. Nan Davis’ work is featured regionally at NorthLight Studios, 357 Depot Street, in Asheville’s River Arts District, and in Brevard at The Lucy Clark Gallery, 51 West Main Street.