Our December Artist of the Month, Nancy June Wood, who lives in San Antonio, is a longtime friend of Art Spark Texas. Nancy is a photographer and a painter with a unique style.

Nancy has been an artist for almost 50 years. She received a BA in Studio Art and an MFA in Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles with full scholarships for both degrees. She started out working as an oil painter and later added the digital element to her work that makes up her current style.

Nancy’s computer enhanced photography starts with a photograph of something that catches her attention. This is usually nature based. She visits Texas state parks for inspiration and also looks around her more immediate surroundings for unexpected scenery such as tiny wildflowers growing along the sidewalk or tree branches over the driveway.

After selecting a few photographs that are well-composed, she opens them in Photoshop and enhances them using various tools depending on the result she wants to achieve. There is no set method. The result becomes a digital painting. Nancy changes colors, smudges lines, blurs, sharpens and adds layers until she gets the results she wants. The works are then printed on canvas or aluminum. She enhances most of the canvas prints with oil paint.

As an artist with hearing loss, Nancy has found that her biggest obstacle before she received her cochlear implants, was marketing her art. She was hesitant to go to gatherings or art openings where she couldn’t hear what was going on. Now, she has a very busy artistic life with work being shown at our Holiday Art and Gift Show as well as upcoming shows planned for the Dougherty Arts Center in Austin in March 2020, and the Anna Reyes Gallery in San Antonio in May 2020.

To see more of Nancy’s artwork you can visit her website at www.nancyjwoodartist.com