Finding Nebo

City grit may not seem to have much to do with a remote mountain community in Western North Carolina. Yet the Asheville Art Museum shows a different story with its current exhibition, “From New York to Nebo: The Artistic Journey of Eugene Thomason,” in which urban realism melds with the rural landscapes of Appalachia. 

Considered a product of the industrialized New South, South Carolina-born Thomason (1895–1972) spent the 1920s in New York among the realist artists of New York’s burgeoning Ashcan School, most notably George Luks. After a decade away, Thomason returned to his native South, ultimately settling in the tiny Appalachian crossroads of Nebo, North Carolina, located between Asheville and Hickory.

“In New York he was yet another small fish in a big pond, but in North Carolina he came into his own,” says art historian Martha Severens, who wrote the catalog accompanying the exhibition. “The setting there allowed him to get away from the competitive rat race and do what he wanted to do on his own terms. He didn’t have to answer to others.”

For the next three decades, Thomason applied the dark palettes, simple subject matter, and bold brushwork of the Ashcan movement to the people and places of his adopted mountain home. His distinctive regional style earned him the nickname “the Ashcan artist of Appalachia” as he became, according to Severens, the visual spokesman for his region. 

Unlike other regionalists of his era, Thomason “tended to see things as they were,” says Severens. “His landscapes are powerful and in no way pretty or romantic—rather rugged.”    

Local scenery shines in paintings such as “Bootleggers Run” and “Linville,” showing a man fishing along the Catawba River. His portraits range from a fictional, hardscrabble community of Scotch-Irish settlers to notable contemporaries such as Thomas Wolfe, depicted with his hat in his hand, perhaps a nod to the writer’s restless lifestyle.

Organized by Spartanburg, South Carolina’s Johnson Collection, which holds the largest collection of Thomason works, “From New York to Nebo: The Artistic Journey of Eugene Thomason” runs through September 13 at the Asheville Art Museum. 2 South Pack Square, ashevilleart.org.