Donna Woodley: Fly Grannies and the Height of Her Powers
In the current Tennessee State University faculty exhibition, two paintings by Donna Woodley have been drawing a particular kind of attention. One of my Art Appreciation students summed it up perfectly: “It’s in the title — Granny is fly. This feels so real to me because this reminds me of my granny.” That might be the ultimate compliment for Woodley — my friend, colleague, and fellow artist in the Nashville art ecosystem — because her portraits are landing where it matters most: in the hearts and memories of viewers who see their people reflected back at them.
What makes this series, Fly Grannies, even more interesting is its source. These portraits, which resonate so deeply with their viewers, begin in the digital space — with AI-generated imagery. At first glance, that might seem like a departure for an artist known for painting from life, for representing people whose presence demands to be seen. But it’s actually a continuation of a long thread in Woodley’s practice. From her “Microsoft Word Project,” where she highlighted the bias of spell-check underlining non-white names as incorrect, to these new digitally seeded portraits, she has consistently asked how technology represents — or refuses to represent — Blackness.
Woodley’s use of AI doesn’t distance her from her subjects; it adds another layer to the question of representation. The technology produces a simulacrum — something that looks like a person, but isn’t. Yet when Donna paints over that artificial image, she breathes humanity back into it. The skin in her paintings feels like skin, not pixels. The gold chains rest on chests with believable weight. The eyes carry that subtle knowingness that a screen can’t reproduce. These paintings are heavy — not just visually, but emotionally. They make you want to sit down and talk with these women, to hear the stories that shaped their posture, their style, their glow. You can almost hear them calling anyone under sixty “baby,” and in the same breath, telling you the facts of life — the joy, the pain, and the joy again.
“…it’s an assertion that aging, too, can be seen as beautiful, as powerful, as cool.”
In this series, Woodley celebrates Black elders, but also all elders. The “fly” in Fly Grannies isn’t just slang for stylish — it’s an assertion that aging, too, can be seen as beautiful, as powerful, as cool. These portraits push back against a culture that often erases the old, the wise, and the women who’ve lived through it all.
To talk only about the conceptual brilliance of this new work would be to miss something crucial: the painting itself. Woodley is a painter’s painter. The surfaces are alive with color, texture, and care. You can feel the time and attention in every mark, the way she translates the digital into the deeply physical. This is what allows her viewers to see real people — because they are looking not at AI perfection, but at human touch.
Outside the studio, Woodley’s presence at TSU has also grown. This semester, she’s stepped into the role of interim gallery director, bringing her painter’s eye to the curation of exhibitions. Even when shows were pre-planned before her tenure began, the way she hung them revealed her compositional sensitivity — the same sharp visual instinct that guided her acclaimed Black Vibrations exhibition at Monthaven Arts & Cultural Center last March.
And then there’s her teaching. Woodley is kind and patient, but also tough when she needs to be. She understands that teaching isn’t a one-way exchange — she learns as much from her students as they learn from her. That openness, that willingness to stay curious, keeps her work vital and evolving.
When I say Woodley is in the “height of her powers” window, I don’t mean she’s reached her peak. Far from it. What I mean is that she’s fully in rhythm — the work, the teaching, the curating — all in sync. She’s feeling it in her studio practice, and that feeling has already yielded multiple powerful bodies of work. This new series seems poised to do the same. There are still goals she hasn’t yet reached, but if history is any indication, she’ll not only meet them — she’ll exceed them.
Because Donna Woodley, like her subjects, can — and does — fly.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
mikewindy=Mikey Mitchell
Arts and Social Practice professor at Tennessee State University, an HBCU in Nashville, TN.
I am a social practice artist with a painter’s eye and a sculptor’s hand, blending folk and conceptual traditions. My work uses color and humor as resistance to the negative ramifications of living in an increasingly complicated world. My signature, mikewindy, is a love note to my wife Windy, my first name and hers, lowercase and conjoined.
