she`s so skirt!

N.J. Woods finally satisfied her muse.

She grew up poor in Orange Mound and worked as a security guard and home health care nurse. But inside N.J. Woods, there was always an artist trying to get out. Inspired by her childhood visits to her grandmother’s farm in Mississippi—“I can still feel the warm eggs in my hand,” she says—she painted what she saw, no art lessons involved. Eventually, one of her home health clients, an art teacher, passed the word to a friend who set N.J. up at an arts festival, and eight years later she paints full-time in an immaculate, light-filled studio. Children playing, tiny cabins in cotton fields, fireflies, bubbles—all have shown up in her favorite work. “When I paint, I’m not aware of time passing,” she says. “I’m in total bliss. That’s how you know what your passion is.”