Artist Nancy Willis lives and works in the Napa Valley. As a painter/ printmaker she works with themes of intimacy and social landscapes. She often uses her own backyard dinners, string lights in the trees or the nature that surrounds her as motifs for the paintings.

With paint or printing ink, Willis uses an additive and subtractive process to explore how color, light and atmosphere can instill meaning and evoke a sense of place. Her work has been exhibited at the StARTup Art Fairs in LA, SF, Houston and Chicago, and Site: Brooklyn. Her 2022 solo exhibition From This Moment On, marked a two project recording the devastating effects of the Glass Fire on her St. Helena neighborhood. Willis tracked the landscape and its renewal through painting and monotypes.

She currently teaches at the Napa Valley College, and Nimbus Arts as well as in her Napa studio. Her entrepreneurial projects include Path of an Artist painting workshops in France and Sundance, Utah.

Willis social practice includes two curatorial projects/museum exhibitions, Nourish and Discrepancy/living between war and peace.  In 2018-19, Willis was awarded consecutive ACNV Community Fund Grants for her project Conflict Zone, a collaborative printmaking project with Yazidis from Northern Iraq.

In 2023, Willis launched The Artists’ Trellis, funded by an ACNV grant. For this ongoing awareness project, Willis brings local artists together with civic and community leaders to create monotypes in her studio. The artwork will be seen in a pop up exhibition in 2024.