New Art of Willard Gayheart

This is a portfolio of 87 drawings by the Appalachian pencil artist Willard Gayheart dating from the early 1970s to the present. The book features information about each drawing taken from interviews with the artist and the owners of the art. Additionally, the book contains information about the artist’s life and music and where his art can be found in the region.

Willard Gayheart is a gifted pencil artist, songwriter and musician. He owns an art and frame shop, The Front Porch Gallery, in Woodlawn, Virginia, and divides his time between music and drawing.

Writer and researcher Donia S. Eley is based in Pulaski, Virginia. An avid music lover and art collector, she devotes much of her free time to causes throughout and beyond the New River Valley, among them the preservation and perpetuation of art, music, land conservation and Appalachian culture.

Willard Gayheart and Donia S. Eley

Foreword by Grace Toney Edwards

Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 208
Bibliographic Info: 87 photos, index
Copyright Date: 2014
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6551-4
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1304-8
Imprint: McFarland
Series: Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies

Foreword by Grace Toney Edwards 1
Preface and Acknowledgments by Donia S. Eley 5
Introduction
Family 7
Front Porch Gallery 7
Fiddle and Plow 8
Gayhearts in the Region 8
The Crooked Road to Art Collection 11
The Art of Willard Gayheart 13
Index 191

“Gayheart imparts a special personal warmth and empathy to his graphite depictions of his friends and neighbors…Willard Gayheart does himself proud in this important collection of regional art with appeal and worth reaching far beyond the mountains of western Virginia”—Appalachian Journal