Dickson’s Burnard Wiley featured in Visual Arts Gallery exhibit

Born on a farm in Dickson County, Wiley showed an interest and natural ability in art at an early age and was always drawing. Public education offered little in the way of art instruction so from the beginning Wiley developed his talents with any form of self-instruction he could find. He read every book on art techniques he could find and completed several correspondence courses in art as well as art classes offered in night schools.

Wiley later studied with Morgan Stinemetz, a recognized authority on animal drawings and paintings whose work illustrated many books and magazines in the 1920s.

For several years, Wiley worked as an art director for a major publishing company and produced commercial artwork from a studio at his home in Madison, where he spent his latter years until his death in March 2002 at age 90.

As Wiley developed his portraiture skills, he moved from pencils into oils and his portraits included people from all walks of life. His religious paintings hang in churches across the southeast and in Pennsylvania.

Wiley was commissioned to paint a mural of Jesse James robbing the Southern Deposit Bank in Russellville, Ky., for a new bank building there and the mural has become a tourist attraction in the area.

In 1971, the First National Bank of Dickson commissioned Wiley to sketch selected historic homes and buildings in Dickson County. Prints of his pencil drawings now hang in banks and offices throughout the area and one of his paintings of the historic courthouse in Charlotte became a fund-raising item for the Dickson County Historical Society and one of the most recognized artworks representing Dickson County.

“Mr. Wiley had not only a keen eye for detail, but the ability to transfer that detail to his canvas,” Southerland said. “He was a skilled interpreter of everyday life who could see the beauty in anything from an old house to a desert sunset.”

The private collection to be displayed in the Visual Arts Gallery at The Renaissance Center will include several of Wiley’s signature renditions of area historical sites.

The Visual Arts Gallery is open 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday and admission is free. The opening reception Jan. 23 is also free and open to the public and will include several members of Wiley’s family who still live in the Dickson area.

For more information on the Visual Arts Gallery or the Burnard Wiley exhibit, call Southerland at (615)740-5519.

The Renaissance Center is an arts and technology education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.

Visit the Visual Arts Gallery page for more about the gallery.

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