PANTEGO — For many years, Pantego native Milbert Whitley was an Army man, a Vietnam vet who spent 27 years seeing the world, serving his country overseas. More recently, however, Whitley has embarked upon a second career — as an artist, one who uses the bounty of nature to create colorful mosaics.

“Before he started this he always creating something, all the time. He’s always been talented like that. Even when he was school,” said a longtime friend of Whitley’s, Edward Griffin.

Birch bark, Spanish Moss, sage, coffee beans, small pebbles, red pepper flakes — Whitley painstakingly collects the pieces and arranges them. Sometimes, he’s the one doing the creating; other times, the work creates itself.

“Sometimes I just put it together and I sit back and look at it and there’s a beautiful picture that I had no idea that was in there,” Whitley said.

The end result, sealed with polyurethane spray, is a work of natural art — one that never fails to impress and often tricks the unsuspecting eye into thinking it’s something else entirely. It’s certainly not a painting; it’s in a class of its own, as one juror in a recent art show told Whitley.

“What bothers me is that people call it painting, it’s not painting,” Whitley said. “It don’t interest me to use paint. I don’t see no future in a paintbrush. I like to see the end results but I just can’t paint, period.”

Whitley embarked on his artistic career after retired from the Army. Suffering from health problems, he said he needed something to do.

“About 2005, I became disabled and I just couldn’t just sit around, so I started with this,” Whitley said.

But Griffin said the desire to create has been a part of Whitley’s persona for a long time — Griffin reminded him of the ashtray Whitley made for him on a visit in the early 1970s.

“He was always making something,” Griffin said. “He could make something out of nothing.”

Whitley said he probably has 400 works of natural art to his name and has taken on a young cousin as an apprentice. He’s traveled throughout North Carolina and out of state to many jurored art shows and has won several prizes. These days, he refuses to let past brain and heart aneurisms, bladder cancer and any other health issue stand in the way of getting his art out in the public eye.

“I’m willing to go anywhere and do an art show. But I tell them that I need gas, I need food and I need a place to stay. Just like in the military,” Whitley laughed.

Whitley said anyone interested in his work can contact him at 252-945-5182 or email milbertw54@gmail.com or look for his Facebook page to view more of his art.