“Landscape is my love. It is ever changing and yet soothingly the same. Nothing can imitate nature, but I hope my paintings will convey a single quiet moment of reflection of nature at her best.” Collectors of Fredericksburg, Texas Artist Nancy Bush undoubtedly concur that the artist consistently achieves that hope with her meticulously crafted paintings. A native Texan, Bush had a natural talent for drawing that was developed at an early age. One of her earliest artistic influences was her great uncle, Ralph Rowntree, who would occasionally allow her to see his work in process in his San Antonio studio. Those early studio visits convinced Bush that one could make a career out of being an artist, but she did not turn her attention to painting on a full time business until she had already achieved success in the business world. In the early 1990s, she began pursuing art as a career with classes in Austin. She also turned to the work of such past masters as George Inness, John Henry Twachtman, Bruce Crane, and James McNiel Whistler for both instruction and inspiration. Over the years, her work has evolved into her present tonalist style that emphasizes subtle gradations of light, shadow, and color over absolute realism. In recent years, some of her work has also become more abstract. She and her husband, Bill, operate the Fredericksburg Artists School, and travel frequently. Nancy makes plein air sketches and takes numerous photographs along their journeys that uses as source material back in her Hill Country studio. She can frequently be founding sketching in and around Fredericksburg and the Texas Hill Country and in Northern New Mexico, where she and Bill have a mountain cabin. When not traveling and sketching, she spends six to eight hours five to six days a week in her studio. Her goal, she says, “is to create a poetic mood of peace and quiet.” An award winning and nationally recognized artist, she participates in numerous museum sales exhibitions such as “The Night of Artists” at the Briscoe Museum of Western Art in San Antonio and the “Small Works, Great Wonders” show at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
Nancy Bush brings a modern perspective and sensibility to a long established American landscape tradition, tonalism. Her paintings easily evoke comparison with such past masters as George Inness, but each is distinctly her own. She is drawn to those moments in the day when transitions occur-early mornings when fog still clings to the land, late afternoons when the sun is low in the sky and light and shadow seem to meld together. The beauty of these fleeting moments shines through in her art giving the viewer a sense of her own quiet appreciation of the natural world. Her work is contemplative, evocative, and inspiring. In many ways, Nancy’s paintings tell us to slow down, to notice the inherent beauty in the most commonplace scenes-scenes that we might pass by without looking carefully. She does look carefully, she does notice the subtlety of the changing late afternoon or early morning light and because she can reproduce those scenes with such skill and agility, we get to see a facet of life that we could easily miss altogether. MD