By Mike Donahue

Moapa Valley Progress

Nancy Glazier is an incredible artist. Her work is renowned for its unbelievable attention to detail and persuasive beauty. She manages somehow to instill in her wildlife depictions a feeling, a compelling personality of subject that seems to flow from her paintings and draw the viewer in.

While Nancy is a world traveler whose talent would allow her to live just about anywhere, for the last few years she has called Moapa Valley home. She’s discovered what a lot of us have known for a lifetime of years, whether we were actually born here or not, our little rural corner of the world is a great place to live and grow. And believe it or not, for all her ability, for all her success, as an artist Nancy says she is still growing, still evolving.

Nancy first started painting as child in Utah when a grandparent gave her a set of oil paints. Three cheers for grandmas. Four years later her father sold one of her paintings and the rest is history.

Although largely self taught, throughout her early years Nancy has had various tutors and teachers including Cody Museum mural artist Adolph Spohr. But teachers and tutors aside, her ability goes far beyond that which can be taught.

She seems to have an ethereal connection with the animals and wildlife she painstakingly creates on canvas. She has done magnificent works of everything from elk to bears, from horses to wolves, from moose to coyotes, from osprey to fox, from lions to lambs and she seems to know them, to feel them, to understand them.

But it’s not just the subject matter that makes her paintings so special. Several times during the creation process, she carefully and meticulously hand rubs her works with oils, imbuing them with a layered luminosity that gives each painting an incredible life and depth, until she feels the work is finished. They are wonderful.

Yet for all her success, for all her accomplishments, 13 years ago Nancy says she felt as though she had reached a pinnacle, sort of a “been-there-done-that” plateau. She had been painting for more than 40 years and suddenly wanted something new, something different.

“I was ready for a change,” she says.

So, always up for a challenge, change she did.

In one brief moment, the attractive dark-haired artist started down a path that would turn out to be brain-altering, literally. Nancy, who had always painted right handed refused to allow herself the luxury of that hand.

“One day I just decided I was going to do something new, so I put my right hand in a back pocket, set a timer for an hour and began to paint with my left hand,” she says. “At first it was unbelievably difficult. It was like I was starting completely over and I really felt like I would burst or implode if I couldn’t create.”

But Nancy didn’t quit, didn’t budge an inch and just kept pushing and pushing herself.

“It began to affect my personality,” she says. “I became anxious, my balance was off, I would get dizzy. I just wasn’t myself anymore.”

Within months, however, Nancy began to settle, to re-find herself, her art. Her wonderful ability to create began to shine through the difficulty of a new technique.

“Suddenly I was making all kinds of changes and it felt okay,” she said. “It took time, I guess it was just my brain rewiring itself, but everything just seemed to level out.”

Nancy had discovered in herself, by herself, a phenomenon scientists are studying but still don’t fully understand. The brain is plastic, alterable, and it changes and evolves as we change and evolve.

As Nancy changed her habits, her actions, herself, her brain did rewire and she became different.

“Through the change in myself I think I’ve become more rounded, more balanced,” she says. “I used to be shy and I’m not anymore. I want to share now. It’s become very much a part of me.”

I know little about the language of art but I believe that separate and apart, Nancy’s right hand paintings are a romantic realism and her left hand work is more impressionistic realism. Either way, today it’s not either/or. Today she creates incredible works using both hands in a style that’s uniquely her own.

It’s opened a new world and for the first time in decades she’s doing portraits; another evolutionary step for a remarkable artist.

And because she never wants to stop growing, expanding and evolving a positive way, Nancy has started another endeavor, something complete different.

Not long ago she launched Quantum Leap Labs, LLC, a company devoted to “ideation and formulation of gluten-free and sugar-free products.”

She’s already formulated a chocolate chip cookie that is “truly a breakthrough,” she says. “It’s gluten-fee, sugar-free and high fiber,” and will soon be available through a well-known cookie company.

“I’m getting real charge out of this; as much as from my paintings,” Nancy says. “The creating aspect is wonderful. Gathering all the ingredients, the flavorings, the colorings and then plugging them into create something different, something new.”