My work often combines portrait, still life and landscape. As an advocate for the arts, education, and the environment, I paint to make a connection between two worlds; the world of ideas and the world we touch with our senses. It is said that the Arts show a pathway to the possible from the probable.
In December of 1970 I received a Bachelors of Science in Education from the University of Kansas (KU), allowing me to work as a Visual Arts Educator. Most of my early teaching career was at Topeka High School where I taught design, drawing, pottery and filmmaking. The filmmaking classes were established as a result of our school receiving a grant from the Kansas Arts Commission. It allowed me to create, along with others, a film study program. As a graduate student I set up a pottery studio and taught at Lansing State Penitentiary, studied pottery at the Kansas City Art Institute and attended courses in filmmaking at KU, the Center for Understanding Media in New York and Emporia State. I left public school teaching in the Fall of 1978 to raise my children, returning to KU to receive a Bachelors of Fine Art in Painting in 1989. As the recipient of a Lockwood Scholarship I studied in Europe the summer of 89, returning to Kansas to set up my painting studio in Lawrence. I have been painting professionally since.
Working primarily in oil, but I’m comfortable with a variety of media. As a storyteller, my paintings are often layered. Viewers can appreciate them on many levels.
My paintings and drawings have appeared in numerous group and solo shows beginning in 1993 at the Lawrence Art Center. The most recent solo show was at the Coutts Museum of Art in El Dorado in 2022. After completing a National Parks Residency in 2019, the Department of the Interior Museum of Art in Washington D.C. requested a piece for their Museum. They subsequently honored me in 2021 by naming me as one of 25 artists to know of those who have work in their collection. I paint on commission and as my personal form of expression.
Testimonials:
“I have four pieces of Nancy’s work. each evoking special feelings, memories and thoughts. “The Flint Hills of Kansas” takes me home to one of my favorite Kansas spots, looking across the soft green hills surrounded by the huge prairie sky. “Donuts and Coffee” keeps me mellow, greeting me each morning as I set my espresso pot on the stove. “Artists’ Tribute” takes me away to memories of many wonderful evenings exchanging stories with cherished friends. One of those friends is Nancy. Then there is the piece I call “For the Love of Jim”. Nancy sent this special drawing to my husband not long after he was diagnosed with cancer. It is full of sweet memories and thoughts of my soul mate and forever love. Thank you Nancy for creating such special art for my life.”Joyce Cox, CA
“In my portrait, Ann, Nancy captured me in an intimate way….the way I turn in my feet, my chickens, my favorite suede shirt. This painting reflects the richness of her work. Its like you can reach in and touch and be a part of the New Mexico experience.”_Ann Lerner, NM
Lawrence Journal World article by Sara Shepherd
Nancy Marshall’s River Series paintings aren’t exactly landscapes. And they aren’t exactly still lifes. They’re both — depicted in saturated color and detail, with touches of mystery and fantasy that convey both nature’s beauty and people’s indulgence in a single frame.
Pieces from the River Series, Marshall’s most recent themed body of work, are the centerpiece of an exhibit in Parkville, Mo., and will be featured on this fall’s Lawrence Art Walk. The series joins other examples of Marshall’s signature work, including bird’s-eye tabletop scenes and portraits.
Marshall, who formerly taught art at Topeka High School, grew up in Hannibal, Mo., near the banks of the Mississippi River. For her, rivers represent adventure and freedom, and her own recreational voyages include canoeing on the upper Missouri, a Wilderness Society Camp in Rocky Mountain National Park and, in May, a rafting trip on the San Juan.
Her River Series paintings are more fantastic than photographic.
Canvasses depict still lifes — of sumptuous picnics with champagne and fruit or plein-air breakfasts with coffee and pastries — that give way to rivers, both swirling and placid, on the horizon. Wildlife dots the scenes, from butterflies alighting on a plate to distant blue herons partially obscured by mist.
Beyond the power and beauty of America’s rivers, Marshall is concerned with their ecological health and hopes her paintings might inspire social consciousness.
“I like the idea that people understand where their water comes from and the importance of having clean water,” she says. “It all comes down to political decisions that are made.”
In her portraits, Marshall also takes a carefully arranged approach.
Besides the likeness of her subjects, she inserts their prized possessions, their home landscapes and sometimes even their loved ones into the composition.
“We define ourselves by things we choose to have around us,” she says. “So putting those in a painting adds to who we are as a person.”
Topeka sculptor Jim Bass, whose late wife was a high school teaching colleague of Marshall’s, noted Marshall’s attention to detail and ability to balance color and composition. He also commended her portraiture.
“Portraits are scary things to take on,” Bass says. “She just jumps in there where angels fear to tread.”
Cindi Morrison, director of the Mulvane Art Museum at Topeka’s Washburn University, facilitated the purchase of one of Marshall’s bird’s-eye tabletop still lifes for the museum — entitled “Coffee and Cards by Candlelight” — and also bought two river-inspired prints for herself.
Morrison calls Marshall’s paintings “almost surrealistic.”
She notes the detail of a hamburger on a plate carried by the woman in “Ogallala Siren” and the mystery surrounding paintings of riverside picnics sans people — is someone getting ready to eat, mid-picnic or already finished?
“They’re like imaginary — kind of dreamlike — moments in time,” Morrison says. “That’s kind of what draws me to her work. It’s not your run-of-the-mill still life — it has extra layers to it.”
Photo by Richard Gwin