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Moving Mountains - J. Chris Wilson’s “From Murphy to Manteo” Series
Written by Cristina Virsida
Landscape artist and Southern Regionalist painter J. Chris Wilson is on a quest - to create the largest and
most ambitious series in the history of landscape art, a personal and comprehensive portrait of the
entire state of North Carolina on canvas.
And like any proper Arthurian-sized quest, it’s nearly two decades long in the making, spanning
thousands of square miles. Aptly named “From Murphy to Manteo: An Artist’s Scenic Journey”, Chris
Wilson’s impressive goal is to complete one hundred immense oil paintings by the year 2014, effectively
creating a series unlike any other before it.
At first glance, this project does feel fictional in its seemingly impossible, gargantuan size. But for Chris
Wilson, this is no lofty, unattainable goal. In his forty-plus years of working as a professional artist, Chris
has successfully completed over one thousand paintings, works of massive size, many over nine feet
high and some as large as twenty-seven feet in width. This isn’t your average landscape artist, to be
sure.
This is an artist who was willing to risk life and limb just to get an impossible shot of Bald Head Island, a
feat that required the 63 year old artist to leap from a river pilot’s launch in the open ocean onto an
enormous sea-going cargo freighter that was only accessible by climbing a rope ladder up the side of the
moving ship. Only a fiercely determined artist, devoted to his craft, would risk such a thing. And only a
thoroughly devoted artist would take on something as professionally risky as this series.
Up until this May, Chris was a full-time Professor of Art at Barton College, a position he’s held since
1974. Originally from Georgia, Chris’ demeanor is reminiscent of a true Southern gentleman – open,
warm and welcoming with a hint of wise benevolence gained from his many years of teaching. That
Southern charm combined with a natural humility is at first quite disarming. When I initially asked him
about the size of the series and why a goal of one hundred pieces, he replied with that gentle southern
inflection, “It’s a nice round number, “ he said with a grin, “and it seemed like something I could do.”
Initial impressions aside now, this was no ordinary Southern gentleman. This was a man on a mission.
Like a great many history-making quests, the idea for this series came from a convergence of two
completely unrelated, distant experiences.
While living in Japan some twenty years ago, Chris became enamored with the landscape series “The 53
Stations of the Tōkaidō” by Ando Hiroshige that highlighted scenic rest stops along a well-traveled road
along Japan’s coastline. Believing in the old art adage to “paint what you know”, Chris’ first idea was to
create a series that similarly followed a waterway, in this case the Tar River near his home in Rocky
Mount. But the Tar River lacked compositional variety, and didn’t encompass the broad scope that Chris
was searching for. Then, in 2001, Chris was invited to display some of his works in then-Lieutenant
Governor Bev Perdue’s Blount Street offices. “Bev Perdue's joy at seeing the paintings of her beloved
state began to focus my attention on the fact that although the Tar River that I had abandoned as a

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subject might be in my front yard, I can almost see US 64 from my front porch and it is that famed
Murphy to Manteo Highway that connects me to the entire state of North Carolina.” says Chris. It was
then that the project grew past his front door, encompassing the entire state.
But Chris’ plan wasn’t just to showcase easily recognized, historic landscapes. His goal was “to seek the
most visually impressive scenes as well as scenes that celebrate the dignity of the commonplace”, those
hidden gems that no one would find on a travel guide of North Carolina, spots that maybe only a handful
of locals knew of.
And if he was going to do this right, it had to be a big series, so that no one would mistake it for casual
landscape painting. This was going to be a portrait of an entire state, and to represent the grand scale
of those scenes, the pieces themselves had to be big, big enough to fill you with the sense of really being
there. “And besides, I paint better when I paint bigger,” says Chris, “They’re received better by the
viewer and create a much greater impact, even if that does make them less sellable.”
Almost as important as the series itself, the scenes had to interest him creatively. They had to be
intense, full of great depth and contrast, enough to want to paint them in the first place, with imagery
ranging from vast barrenness to thick, dense detail. “It’s all about light and dark for me, what advances
and what recedes,” says Chris, “and what makes for a beautiful composition. “
Chris knew this project would take more than his usual level of perseverance. This was going to take
thousands of travel and research hours, because there would be no way to find those rare gems on a
Google map or a tourist website. And since he was still years away from retirement, this was all going
to happen in his off-time, on weekends and holidays off work. That’s a decade of driving, sketching and
planning at least. Not to mention all the paint and canvas and wood and supplies necessary, because
there was no part of this series that would be commissioned. He was on his own financially and
professionally. To accomplish the gargantuan task he’d set for himself, he’d have to push away all other
extraneous interests and throw himself heart and soul into it. He’d have to be thoroughly and
unquestionably devoted.
Here’s where most artists would head for the first exit off that train of thought. The project itself is
rather intimidating - colossal in its complexity and size, looming ahead like a great distant mountain that
has never been successfully scaled.
And here’s where Chris Wilson jumps in head first, without a second glance back. All of those reasons
why an artist shouldn’t take on such a large, risky project are, in his mind, exactly why he should. “I’ve
always had the ability to ‘move a mountain with a tablespoon’, to delay gratification and work on long-
term projects.” says Chris. “But I don’t look at the mountain while I’m working. I focus on the
tablespoons I can do each day because that’s the only way to achieve it all.”
It’s that methodical, one foot in front of the other way of working that makes this project fully attainable
for Chris, and a firm belief that all those obstacles which are obvious to others are superfluous and of no
consequence to him. “Time, paint, space restrictions … those are all artificial barriers,” says Chris, “and
I’m not letting an artificial barrier govern what I can and cannot accomplish.”

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The first and easiest decision for Chris was where to begin. Highway 64‘s scenic byway was the perfect
cross-section of North Carolina, a symbolic and geographic sampler that encompassed the diverse
landscape of the state. It also gave him a most fitting title for the series, stretching 563 miles from start
to end, from “Murphy to Manteo”, a phrase known to the locals that means “all of North Carolina”.
So in 2002, Chris started breaking “the mountain” up into pieces, taking a magnifying glass to all of US-
64, dividing up the counties into manageable parts. Day trips to nearby counties became weeklong
stays hundreds of miles from home, at condos and hotels in search of those scenic gems. His studio
bookshelves quickly filled with notebooks of jotted scribbles to record interesting locations, travel
brochures numbering in the hundreds, and album after album of potential painting references.
In the last decade, Chris has managed to find and photograph over two hundred sites for his series,
create hundreds of sketches and small study paintings, and complete thirty of the one hundred total
pieces all while renovating two historic homes, sitting on the Boards of multiple arts commissions and
historic preservation non-profits, and maintaining his full-time teaching position at Barton College.
The pieces themselves can range from lush green mountain ranges to barren, heat-baked plains, from
clear blue skies to torrential downpours. Yet they all carry Chris’ signature style of intense contrast,
subtle yet brilliant use of light sources, and a director’s eye that ever so subtly leads the viewer off-
center, a technique that adds to the realism of the work.
“There are times and places where everything converges, the shapes become aesthetically harmonious,
and it all comes together to create the most visually beautiful scene.” says Chris. “Those are the spots
that I’d drive all day to find.”
It’s Chris’ personal “scenic journey” that is most immediate in each of his pieces, the feeling that no
matter what angle an ordinary viewer may have of that location, no matter what lens they used to
photograph it, it would still never quite capture what he has captured on canvas. That rare moment
when we are able to see what he sees – the uncommon beauty within the commonplace landscapes of
North Carolina.
Eleven of Chris’ initial 30 completed pieces are now on display at the North Carolina Museum of History
in Raleigh. Due to the sheer size of the series, the paintings will be housed in multiple locations, starting
with the Museum, running through 2014. Says Museum Director Ken Howard of the series, “Our
permanent exhibit, The Story of North Carolina chronicles over 14,000 years of the state’s
history. Chris’ series of paintings From Manteo to Murphy is a perfect complement to this exhibit, as
it gives our visitors an artist’s representation of some of the counties featured. We are so pleased to
have Chris Wilson's beautiful paintings on view in our Museum.”
Chris’ creative plans don’t quite end with the completion of this project in 2014. His never-endingly
methodical mind has the next decade planned out in advance, with timelines and sketches and
photographs already in the works. As a companion to the ‘Murphy to Manteo’ series, he‘s planning on
completing an additional fifteen to twenty pieces featuring some of North Carolina’s more widely known

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natural locations, outside of the US-64 corridor. After that, he’d like to focus on scenes of local
Wilmington and attempt a series of nocturnes of North Carolina.
Listening to Chris and watching him make the impossible possible, I have no doubt that he will succeed
in any goal he sets for himself. He’s made me a believer.
There will always be another mountain to climb, another quest to embark upon, because Chris Wilson’s
true goal is to continually strive to become the best painter he can be, and to find a bit of himself along
the way.