This city is rich in culture. It’s around every corner, etched in the landscape and radiating from the stately buildings downtown. Knoxville’s artistic talent is not something that goes unnoticed, but there are so many artists. You may have an artist living next door without realizing it. I had an idea to write a series featuring our artists and decided to start with my old friend, Gary Heatherly.

I asked Gary, why here? “Knoxville is a lovely city that gives me quick access to the national park and other natural resources. It is also a progressive city with a university, where I attended and began my artistic journey.” 

Gary has a light and engaging personality. His conversation is easy, and his spirit radiates around the room. You can count on him as a genuine friend, always happy to lend a hand. Nature and the strong influence of his family have guided his life and work.

“My philosophy is based on the Pantheism direction,” he says. “The universe and nature are identical to the divine. I have had a close and grounded base with nature since I was a child. I equate the cycles of nature to the human cycle of life. My work shows that theme continually.” Storytime with his mother ignited his luscious imagination while his aunts and uncles kindled his love of art and sense of spirituality. 

Gary’s work provided him with the ability to travel. He has photographed castles in Scotland, England, France, Wales and Caribbean resorts. He has worked for Outside magazine, the City of Knoxville and Whittle Communications. 

Gary was born in LaFollette, Tenn., and moved to Syracuse, New York, for his father’s job at Union Carbide’s nuclear division when he was a baby. Later, they moved to Milwaukee. He was five when his family moved back to Oak Ridge, and then to Karns, on a 10-acre plot. His father loved to garden and agreed to move to Farragut if he could have a spot to garden. Gary lived in Fort Sanders while at the University of Tennessee and graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting & Drawing, with a minor in Art History. Gary moved to his parents’ home in West Knoxville to care for his father after his mother passed in 2006. 

Gary’s Knoxville roots run deep. He held a studio downtown for over 25 years. He was at the Candy Factory, then an arts colony subsidized by the City of Knoxville. He also held a studio in the stately Victorians that line 11th Street, which were also part of the city’s subsidized artist studios. Later, until 2008, his space was at the L&N Station. Gary was the photographer for the new Knoxville Museum of Art’s collections, catalogs and other marketing publications during this time. 

At the 1982 World’s Fair he showcased the 3M Scanamural, an early large-format laser scanner and digital printer that used photo-transparency and acrylic paint to transfer images to any surface. He worked for a display company based in Memphis. They secured contracts for large-scale printed canvases for the US Post Office and the Peruvian pavilion at the World’s Fair.

Gary says, “I also was hired to go to the Philippines to produce medium format, panorama transparencies for the Miss Universe Pageant held in Manila. It was a wild 10-day trip, flying over some exciting and dangerous areas of the Philippines to create 20 x 60-foot scenic murals of the country.”

Gary reminded me, “In ’91 I did my book, Knoxville Then and Now. We received a National Book of the Year award from Warren Paper in Boston. Robin Easter did the design. After the book, I started doing stock photo sales and later started my studio in the Candy Factory.” Gary’s photo books of Knoxville include Knoxville Impressions (1981), Knoxville: Gateway to the South, by Cynthia Moxley, Melissa Martines and the Greater Knoxville Chamber of Commerce (1995), and Knoxville: Green by Nature by Jack Neely (2013).

Today, his studio is his computer and the skies. Gary began experimenting with drone photography in 1995. Exploring the skies with his drone is an addictive muse for Gary, constantly driving him skyward for that sweet perspective and producing images that resonate with the epic beauty of our landscapes.

“The drone gives me the ability and freedom to get aerial views that were originally only possible from hills and mountaintops or planes,” Gary says. “I used to do a lot of aerial work with clients from large developments, architectural firms and contracting firms. The drone can serve as an extension of my tripod for low heights, such as 10 or 50 feet, or provide the freedom to see like a bird from 400 feet. Like all children, we dream of being a bird or being with the clouds, the drone makes a lot of that feeling possible.”

Gary retired from commercial photography in 2018 and now focuses on his first love, photography as art. His current artwork encompasses an expansion of spirituality. His inspiration is the energy that lies within all of us. The atomic connections that recycle and regenerate. Gary feels it’s all connected, each molecule vibrating against another, a resonating pool of matter that continually renews. Focusing on nature, he creates an energy that radiates from the frame.