You might also post at http://www.tomeoftreasures.com/forum/vi ... php?f=2041 and http://www.munchkinpress.com/phpBB2/index.php

If it's the same guy (probably is; it's an unusual name, and the odds of two artists floating around with that name are slim), here's an example of his work, published in the early 1980's:

https://www.acaeum.com/indexes/miscella ... drille.jpg

He unfortunately passed away last year.

Foul

gugland wrote:Thanks Foulfoot.  

Yeah, I read about his passing.  I hope it wasn't untimely or difficult on him or his family.

I also found that pic you directed me too.  It's such a different style, it's really difficult to tell if it could've been done by the same hand.  The piece I have is, well...like I sad, "bad", but there are hints that the artist had at least some grasp of techiques - like those used for shading - and the one human hand that appears (Jesus') is fairly well done.   I've been told that hands are one of the toughest things to master -as evidenced by many other pieces I've owned.

I have a feeling it may not be the same person.

Check out the cover of this book, "THE GHOST, THE GOLD AND THE WHIPPOORWILL" which is also attributed to "Alex Nuckols", but has to be a different artist. Scroll down the page to the small scan, but it looks much different than the other D&D art.

http://www.maydavenportpublishers.com/juvenile.html

gugland wrote:And thank you too misterspock.  

Interesting.  That book cover was very Rockwell-esque.  I searched but couldn't find a bigger scan of it.  

But...it made me re-think search results I had dismissed earlier.  Like this one: http://www.bhamrails.info/

That one seemed unlikely to be the same guy, until I noticed that this other result lists Birmingham, AL as the place of publication

http://tomeoftreasures.com/forum/viewto ... aebb0fe146

This is getting fun.  Thanks again to all of you for your help.

Here's another possibility:

http://www.maydavenportpublishers.com/frame.html
then select "authors"
On that website for Maydavenport publishing, if you scroll down, there's an author listed as Frank Nuchols, M.D. in Alabama. Maybe you could contact him and see if he could confirm your painting's origin.

Maybe the artist decided to spell his name with a 'k', instead of an 'h'? (Nuckols as opposed to Nuchols.)

gugland:

Alex was my former husband and a very talented man.  His dad (You'll find Dr. Nuckols in the Who's Who in the Medical Blue Book) wrote the children's book and, yes, Alex illustrated it.  His great passion was railroads and steam engines and I attended many meetings with him at the Historical Railroad Society.

The story behind the Jesus "painting"-  sorry, the originals were all done in pastels and what you have is one of the many prints that were massed produced....  is that when we were just married he supplemented his income by doing a series of truckers and Jesus paintings that were sold nationwide in truck stops, through catalogs, etc. for a gentleman in Birmingham.

He also did numerous, extremely funny cartoons, which he was locally admired for.  

You might take a course in diplomacy before dissing anyone with talent, too.  Can you draw?  Have you been published?  

He may be gone, but he certainly is not forgotten.

@adw1k2g:

You're right.  While I was not intending to "diss" Alex, I suppose from a spouse's point of view, that's how it came across.  For that, I sincerely apologize.  Calling the work "bad" was completely unnecessary and very insensitive.  I feel like a schmuck - because I acted like one.

If you will allow me to explain the other remark you may have taken offense to (reformed alcoholic):

In my travels digging for "gems" of amateur art, I have found countless pieces that were obviously done by "reformed" people.  Most will have themes like trucks or motorcycles, but where you would normally find skulls, there'll be Jesus, etc.  I did NOT mean to say that it looked like a drunk painted this, I meant that THEMATICALLY, it's similar to many pieces I've found by "recovering" people.

Regardless, offense is in the eye of the beholder, so I regret the comments.

And no, I can not draw.  I have been published, but with music, not art.  Ironically, it was a long time ago, and to be totally honest, it was so bad I'm ashamed to admit to it now.

As for the info you provided, some of it does match up (I left out one bit of info so I could corroborate any claims people might've made here or in other forums, and your info did confirm that) but, I honestly don't think this is a print.  It has texture.   Now, that might be because it's been exposed to the elements, but....it just isn't as smooth as a print would be.  And the framing method does not seem typical of a mass-produced print, but I honestly don't know too much about framing styles of the 1970s.

Anyway, again I apologize, I did not mean to offend.  

If you're not still too angry with me, could you tell me what is the significance of the number 4?

When Alex was doing the Trucking series, the gentleman who had commissioned them wanted them all done a certain way (thus the, regrettably, horrid style) - BUT he was commissioned to do the paintings a certain way and that is what the gentleman got.  The pictures were all done in pastels, then the next process was to print it on a textured print paper that made it look like brush strokes - therefore giving the look of a real painting.  Sorry.  Look at it closely and you will see a repetitive pattern.   And did you say you found it in Califorinia?  The framing at the time was a matt with a simple frame.  It may have been that the owner replaced the frame with a different one.  At the time, I think he would have been about 24 yrs old, so not a truly seasoned artist.  He never drank or did "recreational" drugs; the man who commissioned the trucker series may have been, though.  As far as the number 4 is concerned, I do believe it was the 4th in a series of pastels...

I was truly perturbed by your opening statements, but after your last postng,  apology accepted and no hard feelings.  

To give you more background on Alex, we met at Birmingham Southern College and later married in Birmingham on 8/31/73.  It was a very tough road to travel, especially with an eccentric like Alex.  Alex loved railroads, old mines, historial landmarks, WWII memorabilia.  He was an excellent watercolorist with a flair for landscapes and really shone in pen and ink renditions.  Unfortunately, he was a lousy husband (many reasons too numerous to state so we'll leave it at that).  We were members, at that time, of the Heart of Dixie railway society as he was an avid steam train fancier (we even lived near the tracks in B'ham so we could watch them go by when they came through on their excursions).  He would make meticulous drawings of old mines sites and old industrial sites that he would find in the woods around Birmingham and that are now being used by preservationists.

He did illustrate a children's book that his dad, Dr. Frank Nuckols, had written entitled "The Ghost, The Gold and The Whippoorwill".

If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to call on me.  Thanks for your communiques....


Andrea

Thanks for the info Andrea,

And sorry for the slow reply.  I've been busy with other things and haven't had time to check on this thread.  As for it being a print, you're right.  The reason I thought it was an original is that the texture wasn't consistent.  But I think that was from poor storage.  On closer inspection, while it wasn't consistently bumpy, the texture doesn't match up to the brushstrokes.

So it sounds like I have "Safety Is In the Lord" which is likely #4
Car4521's friend has "I Am the Way"

Andrea, do you know how many there were in the series?  And what the names of the others were?  Maybe with some digging, we could find them all.

One thing is odd though, my print was from A&C Pictures in Fairfield, ALA.  But Carl's is from Harold J. Norris, Ltd, in Birmingham.  Were the two companies related?

FWIW, I knew Alex Nuckols as a boy.  If anyone is wondering whether two very different pieces of artwork could both belong to this same artist, my instincts tell me the answer is "yes".  From what I saw, he could basically paint/draw anything (even as a child he could draw like an adult), and I have no doubt that he varied the style, subject matter, etc., simply because he probably found it fun to do so. Also, since I think he made a living doing that sort of thing, he probably met whatever demand was out there.

It tickles me no end to know that Alec (or Alex... I always heard his family pronounce it "Alec") did pictures of truckers and The Lord, which apparently were sold in truckstops.  I am betting he was also amused at the idea of doing kitschy stuff like that.  The first thing I remember seeing by him was a cartoon entitled "Daddy".  It showed "Dad" wrestling with a bunch of paperwork at a desk.  This was done when he was very young, but it was way, way better than any average child could have done.
 His dad, as a previous poster stated, is an M.D.  I noticed a poster wondered about the spelling "Frank Nuchols" as opposed to "Alex Nuckols".  In my opinion, the "Nuchols" was just a misprint.  To my knowledge, their name was spelled "Nuckols", by all the family.

His father is a psychiatrist.  His whole family are good people and Alec's mother is very talented in music, as is his brother.  His brother was a close friend of mine when we were children.  As children, his brother and I got used to having the occasional practical joke played on us by Alec.  Unfortunately, I was so used to this that I remember putting my hand in some dog vomit because I was so sure it was just that plastic "fake vomit", planted by Alec to fool us.  But it wasn't plastic, it was real--Alec was innocent in that escapade.

As a boy, Alec wandered the woods along Red Mountain (Birmingham) and would come home with old railroad spikes, which I think were from an old Confederate railway which transported coal.  He also collected certain war memorabilia.  

I know Alec passed away last summer.  I was shocked when I read the obituary.  The one thing I don't know is why he died.  Yes, his death was untimely, as he was born no earlier than about 1951.  I wish I knew what happened but I've been out of touch with the family for many years and I'm not about to ask since I am sure this has been a very bad blow to them.  They have my sympathy and I would just want them to know that all my memories of Alec are fond ones.