Make Art: Willard Gayheart, Artist at Home
Appalachian musician and pencil artist Willard Gayheart shares reflections with former board member, Donia Eley, on his pencil drawings and the importance of continuing to make music and art.
The art I most like to make are pencil drawings of people. I love to draw people in different situations, mostly Appalachian people. It’s my heritage. I used to call my drawings "Nostalgic Glimpses of Appalachia" and that kindly has been my goal through the years. But I’ve had a lot of commissions too and enjoyed those also. I enjoy being able to create something those people don’t have—a collage of their lives for their families. When drawing real people you’re able to share with them and it’s just kindly so neat.
I just completed two drawings that were special. The first I started last summer and just finished. It’s of a little girl, about four years old, getting a guitar from her grandpa, a luthier. I love her expression looking up at her grandpa. The title is, “Is this for me?”
And this winter a lady from Fries who grew up there in a close-knit family brought a bunch of photos in from her very early days growing up. I did a huge drawing of a dozen events from her life. In the center of the drawing I drew the family.
I just started another for a couple. It’s their grandparents sitting in a swing. It’s just ongoing. I constantly have work waiting.
This work is important to me, because I love to draw. I can’t remember not wanting to draw, even as a child before I started school. Art and music, recording Appalachian culture, and doing things for other people. This past Christmas a couple had me do a family scene at a state park in North Carolina, so I recreated the lodge there and the family standing in front. They picked it up and they cried. To have done something to make them so happy, that’s my satisfaction, that they have a treasure from now on.
When considering suggestions for others making art at home, I have a little thing I thought of years ago that kindly guides me. God is the creator and we’re created in his image, and that means we have a spirit in us of being creative, as well. I think people are happiest when they are being creative in some way. It can be building, drawing, writing, cooking, anything that makes you feel creative. I believe it’s part of our DNA.
A note from Donia Eley. At age 12, Mr. Gayheart got a job lighting the potbellied stoves at his four-room school, and was paid 10 cents a fire. At the end of the school year he used the three dollar paycheck he earned lighting stoves to purchase a guitar he’d seen in a downtown store. His mother taught him several chords and thus started his music-filled life. He writes songs and still plays music throughout the region. He released his first solo CD in 2019. May through October, Willard and his son-in-law Scott Freeman entertain visitors from all over the world in the Breezeway of the Blue Ridge Music Center every Tuesday and Thursday from noon until 4 pm.
You can learn more about and hear Willard Gayheart at his website Willard Gayheart & Friends or through one of the books he and Donia Eley collaborated on: Willard Gayheart, Appalachian Artist and New Art of Willard Gayheart. His books and music are available from many online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.