Nora Rothwell Has Multiple Artistic Interests

New Anderson Artists Guild member Nora Rothwell moved around a lot as a kid but considers Jacksonville, North Carolina, to be home.

After high school, she spent three and a half years in the Army working in communications at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Then she worked in human resources for 10 years until a worsening economy forced a reset. That led her to return to school at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College for training as a diagnostic radiologic technologist, or x-ray tech. She is also certified in CT scans.

Today, she is an x-ray tech in the Prisma float pool, which means she covers shifts at different hospitals, often at the last minute. A major reward of this career is helping people through a medical procedure.

In her spare time, Rothwell works in three artistic mediums: sketching, acrylic painting, and stained glass. For sketching, her subject is often people. Painting happens when inspiration strikes. Her style is realistic. One piece (this one in oil) was based on a picture her husband had taken of an orchid growing out of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Another shows a woman curled up in a corner.

Stained glass is a more recent interest. She started attending classes right before COVID but only got three classes in before everything was cancelled. “I did YouTube research to figure out the rest of the process,” she said. She has found some large pieces of glass at companies going out of business and at an estate sale and favors intricate designs such as a sugar skull.

She would like to sell her work and is currently trying to build her inventory.