In her own words, "I was born July 18, 1934, the youngest of four siblings. My Father died the next month, August 15, 1934, of acute appendicitis. Needless to say, my Mother did not have an easy life..." As a child Nancy helped out on her grandfather's tobacco farm, and remembers enjoying it. She loved to doodle. She did art posters in school, was the art editor for various publications in high sc
hool, and wanted to be an artist. But, she continues, "..I was never able to convince my Mother that I could make a living with my art...So, when I finished high school, I was expected to go to college and pursue a vocation that would assure me of a job so that I could support myself. I consequently chose business and marketing, never realizing that it would be of so much help in my art work. She has a degree in business from UNC-Greensboro. Her husband is a graduate of Averett College in Danville. As she has said proudly, her talent was God-given and she has never had to market her work. People have sought her out ever since she started to paint. Her tobacco culture series illustrates every stage of the cultivation, processing, and marketing of the once important crop. Her art has immortalized an agricultural phenomenon that created and sustained much of the Southern economy until recent years. Her art is worth visiting up close. Nancy pursued other creative activities like fabric painting and "any new trendy form of art that came along. I did illustrations for two cookbooks, Idle Hens Don't Lay' for Woodlawn Academy and "Sutherlin Samples' for Sutherlin Academy (both were fundraisers)." When her sons could drive, she signed up for art classes, first at the YWCA, and then from Paul Bond, the head of the Art Department at Stratford College. She continued with classes at Averett College. She helped form the Danville Art League and "took workshops from every visiting artist that I could." "Somehow, I got into painting tobacco barns and that started my art career. It seemed that everybody wanted a picture of an old tobacco barn. I was really getting tired of painting them. I was sitting in my studio one day painting when a little light bulb came on over my head and it said, 'Why don't you paint one and have it reproduced?"" She thought it would be a good idea to do a series of the process of growing tobacco and put a different barn in each picture. "That way the buyer could choose the barn they liked or collect the whole series if they so desired. My business and marketing training came in here. I had McCain Printing Company in Danville reproduce my drawings in black and white and they were a big hit. "I started selling them at shows and made enough money to have them printed in color. Bob Stovall, owner of Virginia Arts, Inc., Lynchburg, VA, saw my works at a show and approached me about reproducing them in color. I couldn't wait to get started. We started out with four scenes just to see how they would sell. It proved to be a great success! I did two more and then I did one each year. When I got to the lucky' thirteen, I decided to let tobacco rest and do some fun painting." Inspired by her husband's extensive experience as a tobacconist, she was able to capture every phase of the culture from planting to auction. Leon worked for years as a buyer. He traveled to Brazil, Mexico, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, and other states. In Brazil a contract system was in place and tobacco was graded, its quality determining the price. In the USA the auction system was how tobacco was bought and sold. In some places (WI, PA, MD) tobacco was air-dried. In others (VA, NC, SC, GA, FL) it was flue-dried. In WI he bought from individual farmers. In PA tobacco was cultivated near Lancaster by the Amish. There was bright-leaf tobacco and burley. Nancy captured it all in her art. tobacco cultivation process, Nancy moved on to other subjects. She has taken many, many art workshops over she years, in places like Blowing Rock and Boone. NC, studying with teachers Robert Burridge of California and Cheng-Khee Chee, Associate Professor of Art Emeritus at the University of Minnesota who told his class that us artist should not try to establish a style, but should try to change and to grow. Folk artists, like the late Virginia painter Queena Stovall, influenced her. She very much likes to be around other artists and to try new styles. Portraits of her grandchildren, a landscape of her church, large paintings of roses, and even abstract acrylics of fruit absorb her talent. She has a large room of her originals, boxes of her stationery, and prints of almost all the paint-ings. Somewhat restless with oils and barns, Nancy would as soon paint a watermelon, a child, or a flower these days. When asked what she would really like to do that she has not yet thoroughly explored, she answered, "beach scenes." The Compton’s like to get away from Southside occasionally and visit the shore. Using acrylics or water-color, she thought, she wants to pursue paintings of sand, beach chairs, umbrellas, waves, the surf, skies above the seas. She smiled happily, thinking of all those paintings she would do. Outside her studio windows the pines tossed in a hot breeze. Wild orange lilies bent and swayed near a field of grass. An easel awaited a new project. Like the fragile frame farmhouse down the road with its gingerbread eaves and delicate porch railings, and its empty rooms where a family once thrived, tobacco barns stand empty across Southside. Weathered satin-grey wood or brightly-painted red, tilting into overgrown fields, with a lone steer or wild turkey as company, the tobacco barn and the tobacco farms themselves dot this landscape. They are beautiful in their own way as subjects of art, these barns and fields have been preserved, even as the actual structures crumble away.The tobacco industry has changed, faded away, in recent years. But its beauty as a crop in the fields, as a business where white and black families worked side by side in the sun, and where auctioneers rattled off prices will be forever remembered because of Nancy Poteat Compton's vivid, detailed, accurate depictions of a time, lifestyle, and livelihood. "Art" is a funny thing. It is both style and subject matter. Some painters are famous for how they paint. Others are known for what they paint. Some for both. A thousand fine painters may capture the beach and the skies above the ocean in every mood and every shade of gold and blue. Another thousand have painted fields and farmers and barns. This part of Virginia has even produced an internationally-known painter who painted a few barns of her own at one time. The young Georgia O'Keeffe was a student at Chatham Hall, just a few miles north of where Nancy lives. Georgia tried many styles and all kinds of subject matter. But what do we probably most remember her for? Her style. Her colors. Her shapes. Her vision. And with Nancy Poteat Compton? For her, the subject matter and the style were intertwined. She may have tired of her barns, but the world will not. Nancy Poteat Compton.
[Article copied from the "Blue Ridge Traditions" Magazine 2005 - Vol. 12, No. 3]
