Like many places sprinkled throughout the United States, Easton, Md. is a quintessentially All-American town. Its tree-lined streets steeped in compelling 18th and 19th-century architecture along with its charming historic district, brick sidewalks and quaint storefronts scream for the likes of Norman Rockwell to come record its beauty on canvas.

 But Easton is more than just its bookshops, galleries and antiques. Beneath the winsome and alluring surface beats a vibrant heart and soul. The heart buoyed by the continual influx of accomplishment, creativity and sophistication thru the ebb and flow of  an ever-changing population. And the soul? Or rather, the Soul…….yes, the Soul. Capital ‘S’.

The Soul of Easton is the Soul of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a place unlike any other on Earth. It is drenched in its history, its people, and its way of life; a way of life which has drawn upon,  and staunchly maintained, the earliest days of Maryland even as it has moved toward the present; from 1631 when William Claiborne first settled on Kent Island to the 1660’s when Talbot came into being and the first waves of Bennetts, Lloyds, Tilghmans, Goldsboroughs and Chamberlaines began arriving; from the tobacco plantations to the American Revolution to post-Civil War reconstruction to the civil rights movement to the present, the Eastern Shore has always been different. It is a part of the state of Maryland but at the same time, not. Even into the 19th century, Talbot County and Easton were as far removed from Baltimore and Annapolis as they were from England, Europe or Timbuktu.

The Soul.

To the core it is a part of every person born here, every person who lives here, and after a short while, all who visit.

There are other towns, elsewhere, which have tried, but have not been able to accomplish what Easton has. Take Williamsburg, for example. Like Easton it has a heart, a thriving bustling community built on its history. But it has no soul. It is contrived; an amusement park built to showcase its past at the expense of its present and future.

Or say, Charlotte. Again, like Easton it has a heart and is steeped in history. Named in honor of George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte, the little village changed hands between Patriot/Loyalist - American/British countless times during the American Revolution. Yet today while it has people and is growing like never before, it is transient. It is as clean as a whistle, sleek, modern – sterile. No soul.

The beauty and uniqueness of Easton surely rests in its Soul. And the Soul is in its people. People like Nancy Tankersley. She settled here only a decade ago but she is no outsider, no transplant. She is a significant part of the collective Soul.

As part of a military family, Tankersley has spent a large portion of her life travelling, but home has always been in the Chesapeake region, whether in Maryland or Virginia.  During the first half of the last decade she was living in Solomon but showing some of her work at the South Street Art Gallery in Easton. The fact that she settled in Easton was somewhat of a fluke. “I was working as a painter. A friend of mine who owned a gallery asked me to run the gallery for three months while he was opening another in New York.”  She did so and found she liked it. Serendipitously, Patricia Spitaleri, owner of the South Street Art Gallery at the time, told her artists in January of 2004 that she was putting the gallery on the market. By April, when Nancy found it was still for sale, she knew what she was going to do. “It was perfect timing. It was as if things were meant to be.”

The Tankersleys’ purchase of the South Street Gallery in June, 2004 was the next logical step in Nancy’s artistic development. She cut her teeth as a portrait painter, earning a living but focusing primarily on her roles as a wife and mother. Her passion, building a successful career painting what was in her heart, however, was always there in the background. “It always seemed like an impractical choice. I put it aside but it kept calling.” When speaking with other artists, the advice was always consistent. “You’ve GOT to get into the studio,” they would say. “I had to recognize myself as an artist first,” she recalls of one of the biggest obstacles along her journey toward achieving her dream.

She began to spend more time in the studio, one, two, three hours a day and at 40 she cleared another hurdle. She got her first studio outside the home, and soon her work took off. Her painting is influenced by the likes of John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn and Joaquin Sorolla, whose brush work and brilliant use of light are reflected in her own paintings. Also not lost on Tankersley is the often-overlooked recognition by the masters of knowing “when to scrape out and begin again.”

Her beautiful work “Brookletts Morning”, which snagged Second Place at the 2013 Plein Air, is reminiscent of the late 19th-century masters in its style while at the same time pushing the boundaries, a la Sargent, with its subject matter. The painting turns what is normally a stark, industrial monstrosity sitting adjacent to one of Easton’s architecturally significant residential neighborhoods into an extension of the neighborhood’s inherent beauty. The soft golden rays of an Easton sunrise contrast sublimely with the muted greys, blues and purples of soft shade created by the factory, bringing to life the innocent optimism of a gorgeous Eastern Shore morning.

In the mid to late 1990s Tankersley deliberately expanded into landscape as a subject matter and much of the work that resulted, particularly her beach scenes, pays serious homage to those late 19th, early 20th-century influences. The Impressionistic brush work and texture give new life to the style through her choice of subject matter and color. The resulting work gives in-depth relevance to modern Plein Air, a style she prefers as an antidote to some of the more technologically savvy art of today. “Plein Air is a way of embracing Representational art,” she says. “With the advent of photography, many artists got lazy. I look at [Plein Air] as a return to honesty and a kind of rejecting the photograph as truth.”

But painting is not Nancy Tankersley’s only passion.
 
Not long after her move to Easton, in the fall of 2004, “I went out to California on a lark, and it was a lot of fun.” She headed west for the art and what she experienced in California inspired her. “It was like a runaway train, the Plein Air movement. It was big in California, and it had been for 25 years.” When she returned home to Easton, she again knew what she had to do.  While the movement had been popular out west for more than two decades, it was just starting to gain steam back east.  There had been a Plein Air event in Annapolis just the year before and Tankersley thought “Why not here?” But she also realized if it was going to happen here “It has to be now.” And she was right.

Inspiration, however, is one thing. Action is quite another. “A goal without a plan is just a wish”, as de Saint-Exupery reminds us. And action is what Tankersley is all about. Drawing upon her degree in Community Studies and a history of bringing people together for the common good, she immediately got to work. “I’ve always been a community organizer….but it couldn’t have been done without the Avalon, without Al Bond.” Together, the Avalon staff and Tankersley (and a heck of a lot of volunteers) have built Plein Air Easton as well as the town into one the nation’s premier artistic events and destinations. She credits the Avalon’s openness and transparency in what they do as one of the driving forces in attracting premier talent as well as premier collectors. “Nobody publishes [paintings and sales figures] what they sell, but the Avalon is very open about it. I think that’s important. Easton is extremely well organized and we can thank the Avalon for that. There are lots of volunteers and the Partnership with the Academy has also been very important.”

Currently in its 10th year, Plein Air Easton touts on its website that in 2013 the event garnered $325,000 in two and a half days through the sale of 313 paintings and that during the Collector’s Preview Party a painting sold every 45 seconds during a 90-minute period.

While she continues to move herself increasingly into the background with each passing year, make no mistake, Tankersley’s presence and influence are significant portions of Easton’s collective Soul.