Donna Davy, an art instructor at Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College, recently earned national recognition from Artist’s Magazine. Davy, of Mathias, recently earned a Master of Arts (MA) degree, with a concentration in painting and drawing, from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. One painting from her MA portfolio is now featured in a full-page display in the Artists Magazine’s November/December edition as the first-place winner in the Animal/Wildlife category of the magazine’s annual Student Art Competition, a nationally publicized contest.
Davy created a series of large acrylic and gouache paintings for her portfolio, often using her pets as her subjects. Her award-winning painting is a portrait of her dusky-headed conure, named Tiberius, who is portrayed using dramatic lighting.
Davy started teaching Art Appreciation at Eastern in 2019, and she also has been a substitute teacher in Hardy County for nearly 15 years. She saw the continued development of instructional technologies as a means to enhance her learning while still allowing her to work in Hardy County. The program at the Academy offers an online option, using many of the same tools that have become familiar to students in recent months. The experience, she said, was doubly useful because taking classes also helped her with teaching strategies and content presentation.
On learning of the magazine’s award, Davy said, “It was amazing. I was excited that people could see what I did [in the painting]. Art is so subjective; you don’t know sometimes. And Tiberius is my pet, so that meant more, too.”
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