Nine years ago, multimedia artist Charles Heath traded in his business marketing degree for a set of paintbrushes, pastels, pen and ink and a camera in a move many only fantasize about.

Heath was born with what he calls a “God-given talent” for art, drawing, painting and taking various private art classes throughout childhood.

“I was painting in oils when I was 12,” Heath said.

He continued to hone his skills with elective art classes in high school and college, but knowing that an art career was unreliable, he majored in business marketing.

“In my mind at that time I wanted to make a lot of money,” Heath said.

The mindset lasted only so long. Working a corporate job in South Carolina, Heath was unhappy. So in 1996 he quit, loaded up a U-haul full of his belongings and moved to the Outer Banks.

He got a job as a bus boy at the Warf Restaurant and indulged in a childhood passion, sketching and photographing the world around him from local crabbers to marshes, lighthouses to Atlantic waves crashing on the piers. The restaurant’s owner knew of Heath’s hobby and let him start using the restaurant’s walls as a sort of makeshift gallery. The artwork caught on, earning raves from restaurant patrons.

However, the restaurant was only open seasonally, and Heath was laid off during the winter months — six months on, six months off, spent working odd jobs found through the unemployment office.

“I did that for three years,” Heath said.

Heath packed up again and moved to Warrenton, N.C., where he quickly met and fell in love with the woman that would become his wife, Christina. Originally from Mexico City, Christina is a fluent Spanish speaker turned teacher. It was the teacher’s instinct inside her that recognized Heath’s talent and pushed him to turn his artwork into a full-time project.

The couple was looking for a place where they could both pursue their career goals, when a Spanish teaching position opened in Bryson City. Heath welcomed the idea of the mountains, and Bryson City in particular, as his family roots ran deep through the community. Heath’s great-great-grandfather was a Swain County sheriff and his grandfather and namesake, Charley Browning, worked at Slayden Flakes Grocery, the town’s wholesale distributor.

The couple relocated to Bryson City where Christina began teaching at Swain County High School and Swain County Middle School and Heath set up creating a working gallery. Coming full circle, his gallery, located at 7 Depot Street, is housed in the old Slayden Flakes building.

In the gallery, richly colored pastels give weight to Mexican inspired landscapes and scenes taken from day-to-day life. Finely detailed pen and ink drawings of North Carolina’s famous lighthouses line the wall, and candid pictures of the mountains hang alongside their large-scale oil interpretations. His work is based in realism, though he has experimented with Matisse-like cut shapes and impressionism.

“I just draw things that I’m surrounded by,” Heath said of his work’s gradual change from the sea to the mountains. “It’s like a kid in a candy store — brand new material.”

With a relatively short career as a full-time artist, Heath aims to continue his professional development by studying the science behind the form, improving his color application with a focus on hues, saturation and balance. He also hopes to tap into local history, bringing the area’s old barns and forgotten relics to canvas.

Heath’s work is on display at the Swain County Center for the Arts at Swain County High School through the end of January. His gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more about the Center for the Arts exhibit call 828.488.7843. For more information about Heath’s gallery call 828.488.3383 or visit www.charlesheath.com.