This is yours truly standing beside my very first watercolor painting. Scroll down the page to read about me and to see more samples of my artwork.

Link Link Link

	I have had an interest in drawing and painting since the age of ten but did not develop a serious interest until 1994. By then, at age 51, I had helped my wife raise a family of four children, retired from the Navy, and begun a second career as an accountant. Now, having retired again, I am able to spend much of my time pursuing my dual hobbies of art and woodworking. I am mostly a self-taught artist but I have studied with other artists and have attended a number of art workshops. I work primarily in watercolor and various drawing media.
	I find myself drawn to depicting older buildings and structures, some well preserved and others in varying states of decline. The attraction for me is partly nostalgia and partly a lament for our throw-away society. We seem intent on destroying beautiful buildings; sometimes, for no other purpose than to make way for new construction. I am especially intrigued with neighborhood churches. They are so reflective of the people in the communities in which they are located. Obviously built with loving craftsmanship, they were endowed with such individual beauty that they themselves became works of art. Their builders, who also built the communities in which they stand, often contributed a greater gift of care and skill to the building of their churches than they applied to the building of their own homes. As a result, these lovely chapels stand as lasting memorials to the devout moral character and reverence for God of the people who built them. My intent in the depiction of these chapels is to pay tribute to such people.
	Because I am convinced that the purpose of art is to convey emotions and not merely images, I concentrate on capturing the moods as well as the appearances of the scenes that I portray. My landscapes are recognizable portrayals of their subjects but I employ liberal use of "artist's license" to alter reality in an effort to instill in the viewer the same emotions that are inspired in me when I am actually present in the scenes.

Calvary Baptist Church Mars Hill, N.C. Prismacolor pencil, 2001 Original is not available Only the crumbling remains of this lovely chapel can be seen today but, years ago, it hosted a thriving congregation and played a very important role in my life. My wonderful wife recently confided in me that this was the place where she spent many hours during her senior year at Mars Hill College in prayerful contemplation as to whether she should marry me -- or listen to her mother. As we recently celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary, her prayers were obviously answered in my favor! Moreover, with the passage of time I seem to have convinced my lovely mother-in-law that I just might be the right man for her little girl after all! God bless this lovely chapel!	Bethel Baptist Church Fleetwood, N.C. Graphite pencil, 2000 Original is available, $135.00, framed 12"x16" This church and the peaceful Bethel community is the source of some of my most cherished memories. When I was a teenager I lived in this lovely neighborhood for two years. It was here that I experienced traditions I'd only read about in books before. Here I actually heard wedding bells and death bells. I will never forget the aura of sadness that enveloped the entire community the first time I heard the mournful tolling of a death bell. A group of us were at work putting up a haystack at the time. All work stopped as we paid respect to the departed and wondered who had died. So many of the good people I knew here now rest in the cemetery of the church but their children and grandchildren remain and are keeping those heartwarming and sometimes heartbreaking neighborhood traditions alive. My heart is with them all, the departed as well as the ones who live there now.
St Mary's Episcopal Church Beaver Creek (West Jefferson), N.C. Graphite pencil, 2000 Original is available, $150.00, framed 16"x20" This chapel was built in 1905. The first service held in the sanctuary was on Christmas Eve of that year. The church has become famous worldwide as one of two "Churches of the Frescoes" in Ashe County, N.C. This church is also the scene of one of my most embarrassing memories, in which I almost turned to a life of crime! When we were teenagers, a compatriot and I took it upon ourselves to break into the chapel and steal the money from the donation box. On the designated night of infamy, we crept up to a basement window at the rear of the chapel, intending to break it to gain entry. Terrified of being seen by someone from a passing car, we squatted next to the window to wait for traffic to clear. Our plan was to remain in that position until a full five minutes had passed without a car going by. That never happened! After an hour and a half we gave up. Barely able to walk after squatting for so long, we tried to sneak away but we mostly stumbled, thrashed, and flailed our way through the underbrush while making our getaway. Who knows, but for the ignorance of two would-be juvenile delinquents who weren't smart enough to realize that the church doors weren't even locked, the world might have been populated by two more master criminals rather than by the two law-abiding, upstanding citizens that we have become. The worst part of this episode in my life is that after all these years, even though we didn't actually break in or steal anything, and in spite of many dollars that I have stuffed into the donation box since then, I still feel guilty!	Mill Creek Church Laurel Knob (Todd), N.C. Graphite pencil, 2000 Original is not available This non-denominational church was built early in the 20th century by Samuel A. Wilcox on land that was donated by Wm. Benjamine Wilcox. These were both ancestors of mine. In its early years the church served mostly the Wilcox (Wilcoxen) family. This because the community was made up almost entirely of the family, which first settled this area of Ashe County. Although the church has never been formally associated with any denomination, it has, according to family legend, at various times been identified as Baptist, Methodist, or Pentecostal. Apparently it subscribed to whatever doctrine the pastor of the moment chose to follow but, always, worship was conducted in a "holiness" fashion. This little church is very special to me, being steeped in family tradition as it is. It was here that I attended the first funeral of my life, that of my great-grandmother, Elvina "Viney" Wilcox (Benjamine's wife). It is also the church in which I had what turned out to be the only opportunity of my life to hear my father preach.
Rescue Mission Lenoir, N.C. Graphite pencil, 2000 Original is not available My wife and I once had a terrible fight related to this church. (What a thing to fight about!) I had just returned home from a time at sea, just before Christmas. Immediately upon my arrival, my wife informed me that she had volunteered me to paint the stage setting for the church's Christmas program. And I had a week to do it! So I went to work in a frantic haste. My wife had acquired two refrigerator cartons that I opened up and spread out. I shoved our bed out of the way and tacked the cardboard to a wall in our bedroom. With a mismatched mix of artist's oil and latex house paints I literally threw a scene that was purported to be the city of Jerusalem onto the cardboard. With only minutes to spare before the program started, my Dad and I tacked the finished "mural" onto the wall behind the pulpit of the church. What followed was a poignant, unexpected event that really got to me. I was feeling discouraged at having been forced to do a project in such a hurry that the result did not please me at all. In fact, it embarrassed me. But the gentle folk of this church were so pleased with it that they didn't take it down after the Christmas program was over. They thought it was such a unique decoration for their church that they left it up for several years until it finally disentigrated from moisture and atmospheric damage. As surprised as I was that a work of mine, which I thought was so poor, was so well received taught me a valuable lesson in humility. Just as it is the reader and not the writer who determines that a written work is good, it is the viewer and not the artist who determines whether a work of art is good or not. I hope I never forget that lesson.	St.Johns Episcopal Church Valle Crucis, N.C. Graphite pencil, 1999 Original is available, $150.00, framed 16"x20" The Episcopal Mission outpost in Valle Crucis was formed in 1842. In 1847, William West Skiles came to serve the remote mission and the people in the area. Rev. Skiles is credited with having the most to do with establishing a church and school at Valle Crucis. He also kept a store, practiced medicine, and taught school in the community. A rumor that refuses to die has it that Rev. Skiles hung himself in the church and that his ghost still haunts the sanctuary. The persistence of the rumor notwithstanding, Rev. Skiles did not die there, nor did he hang himself. He actually died of heart failure at the home of one of his parishioners, Colonel John B. Palmer of nearby Spruce Pine.
Cedar Valley Methodist Church Oak Hill (Lenoir), N.C. Graphite pencil, 2001 Original is not available The congregation that meets in this church dates back to the first settlers of the Oak Hill community in Caldwell County, N.C. The earliest services were held in a brush arbor near the cemetery. Travelling preachers and Methodist Circuit Riders conducted services. In 1867 a church building was constructed. It burned in 1905. The new building, which remains standing today and is depicted here, was erected that same year and dedicated in 1906.	Chapel of Rest Patterson, N.C. Graphite pencil, 1999 Original is not available Standing on a peaceful hill that overlooks Happy Valley and the Yadkin River, the original chapel was built in 1889. That church burned in 1916 and was rebuilt in 1918. Some of the memorial windows and furnishings were saved from the fire and were used in the structure that still stands. The chapel no longer hosts an active congregation and has been deconsecrated by the Episcopal Diocese. The Chapel of Rest Preservation Society was formed in 1984 and now maintains preservation, restoration, and upkeep of the chapel.
Big Flatts Baptist Church Fleetwood, N.C. Graphite pencil, 2000 Original is available, $135.00, framed 12"x16" The peaceful chapel depicted here was built in 1905. It burned down in 1971. The beautiful brick structure that replaced it remains standing and in use today, on Big Flatts Church Road in southwestern Ashe County, N.C. The cemetery here is unique in that it is large and divided into two distinct sections. One section is on top of the hill and the other is lower, next to the church. This division doesn't mean that warring factions within the church refused to spend eternity together! Not at all! The divided graveyard actually came about for a simple reason. The lower section of the cemetery was established first, for convenience. It is closer to the church, at the bottom of the hill, and a shorter distance to carry a casket. The people who are buried at the upper level are there just because they wanted to rest in the peaceful serenity they found at the top of the hill which overlooks the beautiful valley along the South Fork of the New River.	St. Matthew's Episcopal Church Todd, N.C. Graphite pencil, 2001 Original is available, $155.00, framed 14"x21" I haven't been able to learn any of this church's history yet. I'll add it here when I learn it. If you can provide any information or stories that will help me, please get in touch with me.
The Oval Merchant Old Oval (Fleetwood), N.C. Graphite pencil, 2000 Original is available, $135.00, framed 16"x20"	Mariah's Chapel Grandin (Lenoir), N.C. Prismacolor pencil, 2001 Original is available, $140.00, framed 13"x16.5"
The Old Mill of Guilford Oak Ridge, N.C. Graphite pencil, 2001 Original is available, $160.00, framed 16"x20"	Winebarger's Mill Meat Camp (Boone), N.C. Graphite pencil, 1999 Original is available, $135.00, framed 16"x20"
Sleepy Hollow Covered Bridge Foscoe, N.C. Graphite pencil, 1999 Original is available, $110.00, framed 12"x16"	Bunker Hill Covered Bridge Claremont, N.C. Graphite pencil, 2000 Original is available, $150.00, framed 16"x20"

wilcoxart@earthlink.net