Baxley brings nature inside home through paintings, sculptures
Richard Baxley holds a stylized carp he carved with a painting of ducks in the background that was made into a print as a fundraiser for the Ducks Unlimited conservation organization.
{Vikki Broughton Hodges/Davidson Local}
Richard Baxley said he’s always found beauty in nature and has tried to capture that essence in his artwork.
“Our house looks more like it belongs in Blowing Rock than Lexington,” he said of the rustic elegance of the Lexington home he shares with his wife, Vicki. They have three grown children and three grandchildren.
The house has a “mountain home” ambiance with its mix of antiques, Amish furniture and paintings and sculpture by Baxley and fellow artists. Landscapes, paintings and sculptures of deer, moose, ducks and other wild creatures fill the space.
“I was raised in a family of hunters and fishermen,” Baxley noted. “I liked to be outside and enjoyed being in nature. I hunted deer until about two years ago.”
The Scotland County native started painting and carving wood around seven or eight years old and his subject matter was inspired by what he found outdoors, which continues to this day.
Baxley has had more time to travel and do artwork since he retired in 1996 as the director of the Davidson County Public Health Department after 21 years of service. He received a bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in art from Pfeiffer College in Misenheimer and a master’s in public health administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
During his career he received many honors, including the North Carolina Public Health Association’s Hamilton Stevens Award, the highest award the organization bestows, and a lifetime achievement award. He received the group’s Merit Award and W. A. “Bill” Broadway Award by the Environmental Health Section of the NCPHA — the only person to receive all three.
Baxley and his wife have traveled around the world since his retirement, but trips to national parks in America and the mountains are the biggest inspiration for his artwork. From elk in Yellowstone National Park and grizzly bears in Alaska’s Denali National Park to whitetail deer in the Smoky Mountains and moose in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Baxley captures images of wildlife on canvas and in wood and metal sculptures.
Baxley’s more recent artistic projects include an antler basket (left), a Navaho-styled drum and a mountain lion sculpture.
{Vikki Broughton Hodges/Davidson Local}
His most recent projects include an antler basket sculpture and a Navajo-style drum made from a hollowed-out log and a deer hide. He noted one of his paintings of ducks from 20 years ago served as the basis for a print that was sold as a fundraiser for Ducks Unlimited.
Baxley is currently trying to find a book publisher who is interested in putting together a collection of 150 cartoons he has drawn over the years that he calls “The Bax Side,” which is similar to “The Far Side,” a single-panel syndicated cartoon drawn by Gary Larson that ran in nearly 2,000 newspaper for 15 years. Baxley’s cartoons share an offbeat sense of humor like those drawn by Larson. He had some of them published in the Denton Orator and The Dispatch years ago.
“They’re not laugh-out-loud funny but they make you grin,” he noted.
When he’s not painting or sculpting, Baxley works in his large yard. “I consider my whole yard a work of art,” he said of the landscape design, which includes split-rail fencing, stone walls and a variety of plants.
He added a decorative bridge from the driveway to the front porch two years ago instead of a ramp to make it easier for he and Vicki to enter their home. “That’s what you do when you’re retired!”
