We recently connected with Nan Mahone Wellborn and have shared our conversation below.
Nan , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?
My father returned from our annual Side Walk Art Show sponsored by the local Art Center to tell me that my watercolor painting of a still life had sold. This was my very first art sale at age 8 so I was very excited. But I had a suspicious feeling that my Pops might have purchased it in order to encourage my efforts. Move ahead 8 years, I’m in high school theater classes and a fellow pipes up to tell me that my painting was hanging in his mother’s bathroom! His mother was a well known French professor and held Sunday “salons” to discuss the arts with friends. I couldn’t have been more surprised and flattered.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Nan Mahone is landscape painter who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She interprets nature and color in the environment around her, responding to the feelings and moods created by constantly changing light in the landscape. Oils and gouache are her mediums, while observation and appreciation are at the root of her work. She prefers to start her paintings outside, along the banks of rivers and ponds that offer reflections and movement in the moment. Many of which are conserved land, allowing her to further preserve these views and share them with others through her art.
Nan’s paintings are driven by an emotional and expressive interpretation of her interest in a sense of place. Her style captures the immediacy of the moment; she creates tension by taking classic subjects and imbuing them with a modern sense of color and application. In doing so, she transports you to a place, just for a moment, where you could stay forever.
Artist’s Statement
“I want to connect you to an evocative experience and share the passion I have for the landscape. I want you to feel as if you’re in that place, at that time, with a heightened sense of the warmth, smells, textures, colors, and atmosphere. It may be a place you’ve never been, but it will now be a place you won’t soon forget.”
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Conservation! Conserving land and view sheds. Conserving water and our natural environment.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Painting out of doors requires resilience. I love to paint from observation. The view changes from moment to moment. It’s an exciting experience filled with beauty and other stuff like insects, heat and sweat. I’ve had wonderful moments where creatures like mink and deer have walked right by surprising both if us!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.nanmahonewellborn.com
- Instagram: #nanmahonewellborn
- Facebook: @nanmahonewellborn
- Other: https://www.openstudiostourroanoke.com
