At sporting artist Helen Nash’s childhood home in the Tennessee hills, supper was often fresh squirrel, which, to little Helen, was as ordinary as our picking up a steak at the supermarket. “How many squirrels were needed?”. For three, her dad would take just three shells out of the drawer and head for the woods.. The shots were counted in the house and at “three” they could set the table knowing dinner was on its way. Helen herself would sometimes shoot bull frogs for the family larder. Sometimes a rain shower would leave a very smooth patch of earth in the yard on which the children would draw using peach tree twigs as ‘pencils’. Helen remembers trying to draw the curved shape of a butterfly which she couldn’t catch and which she wished to save by drawing its shape as closely as possible. So began the art career of Helen Nash.

Her life would be a product of a large, close-knit and loving family enduring tough times in rural back country, yet she would still find her artistic calling. Her first painting sale was to the Chamber of Commerce in Springfield, Tennessee, now her sporting dog art is enjoyed in media and collections across the country. Recently Helen had a one-woman show at the National Bird Dog Museum in Grand Junction and her portrait of “Mud”, a chocolate Labrador, won wide attention*. Several of her paintings have been published in limited edition prints.

Helen was born of Lela Mae and Austin Axley in Robertson County just west of Springfield, Tennessee. In her childhood, roads were measured by temperature: gravel was cooler for bare feet than asphalt and as their property abutted miles of wooded territory, there were always streams to wade and abandoned log cabins to explore. There was never a lack of wildlife to watch and tell “Daddy” about in the evening when her mother and the kids gathered in the living room. He would often read to them or hear what went on in their day. And here the family values – “honesty, hard work and always finish the job” were likewise passed along.

Once, when Helen could not describe a certain blossom she had seen in the woods, too high to pick, she ran almost a mile, pencil and paper in hand, to sketch the strange bloom and return. Her dad said it was certainly a Tulip Poplar flower and continued to praise her ability to draw. His extensive knowledge and love of the woods and wildlife was shared with Helen as they studied plants and critters they had seen. It is no wonder Helen’s art would be drenched in an almost religious fervor for nature. Home chores were numerous and time consuming, especially when the pea crop was in. Afterwards, Helen and her siblings would usually play in the woods. There they bore a kind of reverence for nature and explored quietly, hushing when strangers might happen by. And they were always home by dinner time.

“In spite of my beginnings I don’t think there was a time I did not want to be an artist.”, Helen told me recently. “My teen years were spent in Kansas with a wonderful Aunt Delcie and Uncle Chuck. This new way of life gave me freedoms and luxuries I'd never imagined, one of those was time, as there were few chores for me there. I loved going to the creek (the only place in Kansas with trees) with my sketch pad and a good book. I felt more confident there and also a bit 'special' in that I could draw things, and make them look real. “I'd built a platform near the top of a huge willow tree where I would read and draw. Uncle Chuck, showed great interest in my sketches; since he liked what I'd drawn, then by golly--I was going to get really good at it!”

Back in Tennessee in her twenties, Helen began a series of night school classes in art; studying life drawing, composition and photography. One teacher, Janice Pollard, was fierce in her passion for art. “Though she painted wildly abstract things herself, she urged each of us to paint in our own style, inspiring and bringing out the best in us.” Some years later when Helen was selling for a chemical company, a client asked her to recommend someone to paint a portrait of his Lab. She suggested she could do it. He bet her fifty dollars she could not, and she accepted, but with the caveat if she won the bet the price of the painting would be more than fifty dollars!

Paint it she did, and on the way to present the portrait to her client, she stopped at a neighborhood restaurant for lunch. Several folks there quickly recognized the dog, saying, “Hey, that’s a picture of good old “Mud!”, etc. Of course the painting was accepted, her price comfortably higher, and “Mud” went on to be published as the Kentucky Ducks Unlimited Sponsor Print of 1990. “Some time laterl I saw a painting of an Irish Setter in the first issue of International Artist Magazine,” Helen remembered, “I’d never dreamed anything could be so beautiful. I knew then that this was what I wanted to do.” Mrs. Nash was now up and running and was not looking back! “Why dogs, then? As subjects, dogs possess these almost human qualities, including body language and facial expressions that makes them perfect, inspirational painting material,” she continued. “The primordial relationship of man and dog is so emotionally seated, in hunting and feeding and protection, it evokes an instinctive reaction in both dogs and humans. Sporting dogs, then, are perhaps one of our best links to understanding ourselves.”

Success did not come instantly for Helen, but she continued to paint and study, attending workshops and/or classes with Joseph Sulkowski, Michael Shane Neal and John Seerey-Lester as she began to sell her work and attract commissions. After making a significant income from her sales job, Helen and her husband, Joe, agreed it was time for her to paint full time. She now ‘complains’ of having fifty things to do at once, but painting is working out well for her. One outstanding commission was a whopping five by six foot mural featuring pointing dogs in an autumn setting along with portraits of the owners, painted especially for the their hunting lodge. Also, she has painted portraits of the consecutive champion gun dogs for the National Bird Hunters Association and The National Vizsla Association.

After many years without a studio of her own, and with Joe’s help, a new room was designed and built just for her. “It is three floors above the ground,” Helen told me, “with eight foot sliding glass doors opening onto a balcony, and is the closest thing to a tree house I can imagine. There are trees as far as I can see through the doors, with birds singing as my background music. I love this place: everything I need it right here, including the freedom to work on whatever I choose for as long as I choose. “The biggest kick I get from painting is seeing a dog come to life in the picture. Sometimes it might be just a highlight on a shoulder blade, or how a leg will curve with excitement - but when it happens, the satisfaction is immense!. I also enjoy the ‘moving and shaking’ - making deals, and especially selling a painting! I love working with a person and seeing their joy when the finished painting is delivered.”

She is now a member of Oil Painters of America and the Portrait Society of America and is associated with the Portrait Brokers of America (yes they handle dog portraits). And as this is being written, Tennessee Wildside, a weekly Nashville PBS television program is taping a feature about Helen Nash, including her photo shoot at the Ames Plantation Field Trial - showing her working on several stages of the resulting painting. Her work has been on the covers of Field Trial Magazine, The Retriever Journal and The Pointing Dog Journal as well as a designer’s plate by the Danbury Mint.

Helen Nash’s childhood was quite unique, to say the least - what is equally remarkable however, is how all through this period, she maintained her positive attitude. Her legacy from her beloved Tennessee woods was not frustration but enchantment plus a sensitivity toward the out of doors and its creatures. Her paintings also show her energy - her dogs and animals are always alive and her settings absolutely believable and likewise warmly presented. It will be no surprise to me if even finer paintings and greater successes are yet to come. In Helen’s own words then, “In any commission, I know there is a great painting in there somewhere, it is just up to me to pull it out.”

You can see more of Helen Nash’s art on her Website at www.wildsidestudio.com