Born a city girl, Nancy “Judy” Woods is a country girl at heart.  Inspired by quiet, wide-open spaces and colorful people, she paints scenes of country life from memory.  On the weekends, to escape the noisiness of Orange Mound, the Memphis community where she grew up, her family would visit relatives in Coldwater, Mississippi.  Grandma Sarah’s shotgun house, with its musty furniture and dark walls, become a country haven for Woods.  She and her four siblings often chased chickens, zigzagged through clotheslines, and ate wild berries.  The ride back to the city was always melancholy, because she hated to leave Grandma Sarah’s country home.  Yancy, her father, inspired Woods’ love of painting.  He painted recreationally in the middle room of their shotgun house.  As a child Woods used tempera paint to scribble pictures on the windows.  She’s since traded in the tempera paint for acrylic and window panes for canvas.  The visits to the country would later inspire many of the self-taught artist’s paintings.  Some of her most popular pictures are primitive scenes depicting country life such as:  “Get Home Before Dark” and “Catfishing.”  During the 80’s, Woods met schoolteacher Wilma Tyler, Tyler would buy and sell artwork for Woods.  “I would go to different schools and sell my work to the teachers during their breaks.”

Painting professionally for more than 10 years, she has shown work citywide at various places like the Nathan and Dorothy Shainberg Gallery at the Memphis Jewish Community Center and the Wings Gallery at The West Clinic.  Woods has sold work in Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.  Some of her awards include: Wings 2004 Gallery Artist of the Year, 2002 WKNO Art & Antiques Auction Blue Ribbon Awards for her painting “Must Be the Eve in Me.”  She’s been featured in At Home In Memphis Magazine, The Orange Mound Connection and The Commercial Appeal.  She’s been compared to Carol Clor and Clementine Hunter.  Her influences include Grandma Moses and Theora Hamblet.  Woods most recent showing was at the Brooks Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.