Keith White dabs his paint brush on an area of a surfboard that sits in the middle of a dining room table at his home in Shallotte.
The surfboard features bright red and blue hues and the outline of the mermaid. Over the next few weeks, White’s brush will bring the mermaid and scene to life with shading and detail, making it a work of art that will one day grace the walls of someone’s home.
While he works with skill and precision, he doesn’t strive for photo-like perfection.
“I like for them to still be painterly,” he said. “I like for you to see the brushstrokes and see the imperfections.”
White, a Shallotte native, has received state and national recognition for his work. For more than a decade, he has created artwork for the N.C. Oyster Festival, and his work has also been featured at the Blue Crab Festival in Little River, South Carolina. Earlier this year, his artwork was selected as the official poster for the 50th annual National Shrimp Festival in Gulf Shores, Alabama.
Finding perspective
Around five or six years old, White can remember enjoying art. He still has many of his old drawing pads, and as he looks through them, he can see how he began to progress as an artist. The drawings of cowboys and trains have shade and detail that are visible in the work of a more advanced artist.
“They’re not just flat drawings,” White explained. “There’s perspective.”
Though no one else in his family shared his affinity and talent for art, White said they encouraged him.
“As soon as I started having any interest in drawing or anything like that, my mom was always putting pen and paper in front of me,” White said.
His mother, Mickey Holden, also took him to learn from one of the county’s most prominent and successful artists of that time, Rusty Hughes.
“Rusty looked at some of your work and told me not to let anybody get ahold of you that was going to tell you do something a certain way,” Holden reminded White.
Hughes, who passed away in 2022, saw something in White, and he encouraged Holden to enter some of White’s work in the annual Fourth of July festival art show, which had a category for artists ages six to 12. Hughes chose four pieces of White’s work for the contest, and White, who was about seven or eight years old, took home first and third-place award, as well as an honorable mention.
“And he had never had an art lesson,” Holden recalled.
Soon after, Hughes began teaching White about art and helped him learn advanced techniques. White went on to take advanced art classes in school. When he was a junior in high school, Eddie Sweatt, who was then publisher of The Brunswick Beacon, a weekly newspaper in Brunswick County, hired him to design the cover of the paper’s Island Living magazine.
“This was before computers,” White recalled.
White created the design using Amberlith, an acetate film, and cutting out each individual color to make the cyan, magenta, yellow and black plates.
White would learn about computer graphics after high school, attending first the Art Institute of Atlanta where he earned an associate’s degree, and then the American School for the Applied Arts where he earned his bachelor’s degree. White worked as a graphic artist in Atlanta for several years before moving back to the Shallotte area in 1998.
Branching out
After moving back to Shallotte, White worked in both landscaping and construction and continued to do graphic design and artwork on a freelance basis. One of those jobs included designing the logo for the Magnolia Greens development in Leland.
White still has the many versions of the logo he created as he experimented with different fonts and graphics. Some include more detailed versions of a Magnolia, which White explained the manager passed over in favor of the now-iconic swirly outline depicted on the development’s signage.
“He said, ‘Let’s do something more simple, more basic,’ so I started playing around with the basic shape, and that’s the one that’s the symbol now,” he explained.
White’s logos and designs also grace several other local businesses, including OIB Surf and Java in Ocean Isle Beach, Patio’s Tiki Bar and Grill in Little River, South Carolina, and Flynn’s Irish Tavern in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
White’s graphic design talents earned him a full-time position at The Brunswick Beacon in 2004. There he produced award-winning ad designs and secured a spot as the publication’s cartoonist. White estimates he had produced more than 1,000 original cartoons over the years, spanning a variety of topics from local politics to area events.
These days, White’s weekly cartoons are produced on a freelance basis; he left his full-time position with the publication in 2022.
White now works for Coastal Printing in Shallotte three days a week and spends the rest of his time producing and promoting his artwork and designs. He is best-known for his coastal scenes depicted in pen and ink, watercolor and acrylic. His scratchboards and surfboard paintings are also in high demand with customers commissioning them after missing out on one at his shows.
White says when it comes to his own favorite pieces, each one he has produced is unique. Therefore, he doesn’t really have a favorite.
“It’s more that I certain areas of a piece that came out just the way I like,” he said. “I wish I could get everything to just fall into place like that.”
White has been selling his artwork at local festivals and events. He does pop up markets during the summer, including the Waterfront Market at Sunset Beach and the Historic Downtown Wilmington Marketplace on Sunday mornings.
While it takes weeks or months to perfect a piece of his artwork for a market, sometimes it sells within minutes. White said while he always wants the pieces to find a home, he sometimes hates to see them go — especially the surfboards.
“If within the first hour, I sell a board, that’s really good, but I’m like, ‘Oh, I wanted more people to see it,’” he said. “It’s like this bittersweet of, ‘Oh, wow! I sold it, but then not everybody got to see it.’ I really like it when somebody enjoys a piece.”
White’s work can be found at Crossroads Gathering Place, 128 Country Club Drive, Oak Island, or on his website www.keithwhiteartist.com.
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