‘I realized there were going to be a lot of challenges involved’
Local artist Paul Nixon carved a San Damiano corpus for a church in Monroe, La.GREENSBORO — Looking at Paul Nixon’s life now, one would never know that he spent 30 years as an auto mechanic before he discovered he had a God-given talent to create beautiful works of art.
Nixon, a parishioner of Our Lady of Grace Church, grew up in Ireland and came to the U.S. in 1985. He worked for three decades getting his hands dirty working with automobiles. While he found that work satisfying, especially since it helped him meet his wife, Francesca, he has adapted joyfully to what the Lord is calling him to do now.
Nixon stumbled upon his artistic talents 18 years ago when Francesca asked him to carve a walking stick out of walnut for his wife’s dear aunt, Mary. Using an old lathe Mary’s husband Raley had given him, along with a knife to carve the wood, Nixon unknowingly began the first step in what has been a fulfilling journey of creating works of art in wood, bronze, stained glass and on canvas – among the many media with which he works.
Two of Nixon’s sculptures are now on display in a museum in Ireland. He has created bronze sculptures which honor firefighters and war veterans, on display in public spaces across the U.S. He has also been commissioned to carve croziers over the years for both Catholic and Protestant bishops in dioceses around the country.
Nixon was recently commissioned by an Anglican church in Monroe, La., to carve a San Damiano corpus for their sanctuary. This was the first time he had ever been asked to create a large carved corpus.
“I started by purchasing a block of bass wood (linden wood as it’s termed in Europe),” Nixon explained. “This is a wood that was used by woodcarvers sculpting statues for the great cathedrals and churches during Renaissance Europe.”
Over the course of a year, Nixon painstakingly carved the three-foot corpus out of bass wood with a halo of olive wood that had been shipped from Bethlehem.
“They were very specific about what they wanted,” he said. “I had never done a wood carving this tall of a human figure before. I realized there were going to be a lot of challenges involved. They gave me a year to work on this.”
He used a projector to project the image he drew onto the wood, moving the projector back and forth to draw the image on the wood before he began the actual carving.
“I started to think of my father (a cabinet maker who partnered with his brother to run a construction business). On all my school holidays he took me to work with him (at a job site). He had me go help the plumbers and other tradesmen that worked there. I did that for several years. I never realized I was taking in all of this knowledge,” Nixon said.
That knowledge really sank in, he said, once he began creating works of art – and it definitely helped during the creation of this corpus.
“I was really thrilled when I finally got the corpus shipped off,” Nixon said. “They wanted it for the beginning of Lent. The next day after the church received it, I got an email from the priest.
“He said, ‘Paul, when I opened the box and I saw what you did, my heart trembled. I took it over to the sponsors and they said it was perfect for what they wanted.’
“I felt I really had to do it. I wanted to do it to say that I have done it. I think I would have done it for nothing just to do it, to have something very spiritual in public viewing,” he said. It was “a lovely conclusion to an awful lot of work.”
— SueAnn Howell, Senior reporter
More online
At www.paulnixonart.com: Learn more about Greensboro resident Paul Nixon’s journey from mechanic to artist and view more of his work
The finished corpus features a halo carved from olive wood from Bethlehem. (Photos provided by Paul Nixon)