The landscape has always been at the heart of Sally Nooney's artistic vision. From the flat, golden marshes of her South Carolina childhood to the dramatic ridgelines and autumn color explosions of the North Carolina High Country, Sally has painted the world she knows with intimacy and affection.
The mountains around Banner Elk and Valle Crucis offer a landscape of extraordinary variety. In spring, the hillsides erupt with dogwood and redbud. Summer brings deep green canopies and rushing mountain streams. Autumn fills the ridges with fire: red maple, orange sourwood, yellow tulip poplar, bronze oak. And winter strips the trees to reveal the bones of the land, stark and sculptural against gray sky.
Sally paints all of it. Her landscape paintings capture specific places at specific times — a particular bend in a creek, a field at golden hour, a ridge-top view at dusk — with the fidelity of someone who has spent decades learning this land and its moods.
For landscapes, Sally works in both oil and watercolor, and the choice of medium is always intentional. Oil allows her to build rich surface texture and add layers of glazing that give distant mountains their characteristic bluish atmospheric haze. Watercolor suits the spontaneous quality of flowing water, moving clouds, and dappled light.
According to the Smithsonian, the emphasis on value and atmospheric light is characteristic of the great American landscape tradition — and Sally's work continues that tradition with a distinctly Southern Appalachian character.
Landscape paintings are available as original works and as giclee fine art prints. If you have a specific landscape you would like painted — a view from your home, a beloved hiking spot, a family farm — Sally accepts landscape commissions and would be glad to discuss your vision.