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A West Point native is adding his artistic touches to communities in and around Atlanta.

Thomas Higgins, a graduate of Troup County High School, already has provided his talent on two murals in the metro, a Braves T-shirt and Orpheus Brewery for its 20th anniversary celebration.

Higgins is now bringing skills in artistic marker illustrations to a $230 million construction project where MARTA, the city’s public transportation system, is remaking its station at Five Points.

“I’m doing two installations for northbound and southbound wall mosaic pieces,” he said in a Sunday morning interview at the Omni Coffee and Eggs cafe in the city’s west end. “Hopefully it’ll be finished by 2026. They want to finish it before the World Cup.”

Higgins’ artistic talents were recognized by his parents who encouraged him as a child.

“I feel like my parents knew I was good at art,” he said. Anytime they would  see something where he could submit a drawing, they encouraged him to do so.

A Valley Times-News Thanksgiving art contest was the first one that he won.

“It was like design your favorite Thanksgiving piece and I drew a super turkey,” he recalls, saying he drew it with muscles on it. “And they selected it.”

At Long Cane Middle School, Higgins said his teacher Elena Thomas continued to encourage him to use his talents.

“She started giving me more opportunities when it came to artist art shows,” he said. “And I won my first major show in middle school.”

Throughout his school years, he became know as the “art kid” in every class.

“I did everything from drawing the posters to designing the doors,” he recalled. “Everyone knew that Thomas Higgins was the artist.”

His technology teacher recognized his gift and had Higgins design the cover of his eighth grade yearbook.

“After that, it was just like everywhere I went, everyone just kept giving me opportunities to showcase my works,” he said.

After graduation, he found his way to Atlanta to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design, know as SCAD. With college getting so expensive, Higgins completed about 2-1/2 years and opted to leave and set out on his career as an artist.

After that, he said he went on a little journey of finding himself, reinventing himself several times before finding and creating his own brand.

Higgins discovered marker illustration art best fit him and who he is as an artist.

This style brought him back to the style his high school art teacher Rena Weatherington introduced to him after he had tried his hand at painting, sculpting and other styles.

“She went to Office Max, grabbed me some markers, brought them to school,” he said, noting that she said he could do what he wanted with them. “That marker set helped me get my scholarship at SCAD.”

“It took me 10 years to develop a particular style that looks like me. That’s the biggest thing people want,” he explained. “It’s not so much of the artwork, but they want a piece of the artist. They fall in love with artists.”

He returned to contemporary marker illustration as the foundation for his business, Tom Davii LLC, after again trying many options.

“I still find a lot of joy in it,” Higgins said. “I’ve been blessed with great clients who just love my art.”

There isn’t a book that provides a guide on how to become a great artist, he noted.

Higgins said it took him a long time to build a network by showing his face in as many different places as he could.

He soon found himself selected to help with a mural honoring the Rev. James E. Orange on the side wall of the Goodwill store on Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard.

“I guess doing murals like the one at Goodwill that also helps you get your name out, get to know more people,” Higgins said.

He said that mural in the West End of Atlanta brought people to him who admired his work, and since have reached out to him for other projects.

“I was just building a connection from something that I did years ago,” he added.

Higgins also was part of a second collaborative mural project that featured his talents.

This volunteer involvement has also helped him land paid work, such as doing a T-shirt design for the Atlanta Braves, designing a series of bottles and his own signature can at the Orpheus Brewery, creating artwork for the television show “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” and now the MARTA project.

He believes this artwork will provide another avenue for getting his name out while securing him a legacy because the mosaic creation is expected to be there for at least 30 years.

“Now I’m developing two ink pieces that are about to become mosaics,” he said.

With his career going well in the Atlanta area, Higgins is now hoping to return to his roots at a fall art show in LaGrange.

“I’m looking at it like, maybe I need to give my experiences back home to those who are looking for the same outlet, but can’t get it,” he said.

Finding inspiration

Higgins said he loves traveling, fashion, sport and particularly experiences to provide him enjoyment and inspiration.

“If I spend money on anything, it’ll be experiences,” he said.

He particularly enjoys traveling with his wife Rebecca, whom he married in 2022, but they’ve known each other from high school.

Two years ago, he said they traveled to California just to see the sequoia trees in Sequoia National Park.

“My wife took me to Rome,” Higgins said. “I like a lot of Greek mythology. I used to read books about the Temple of Zeus and Colosseum.”

A super inspiring part of that experience was a visit to the Vatican and seeing the Sistine Chapel. He got to see the sculptures and paintings by Michelangelo.

“When you go in there, you have to be quiet. There’s no cameras,” Higgins explained. “You just have to sit there and look up and it felt humbling. That’s something that I want to leave behind as art. That’s why I feel like MARTA is a stepping stone.”

Along his journey to the present, he noted that he usually does works of art in a collection of four, keeping one of the pieces.

“One of the pieces that I cherish the most is one of my first cubism pieces,” he noted. “I only say that because at first I was going by so many rules of how I feel like my art should look.”

These include rules such as his art having an outline, great balance, the right scale, colors blending nicely — all so it would look perfect.

“And then one day I was just like, what if I don’t follow the rules?” he said. “What if I break all rules and just wanna create something that I feel like I love.”

Some of his mentors and friends responded saying they really didn’t like it, much like what Picasso found when he moved into cubism.

“So he put it up, hid it, just didn’t even look at it again,” Higgins said of Picasso. “Then another artist came out and started doing the same thing and they got popular. So then he brought it back out and everyone was like, ‘This is great. This is you.’”

He said this helped him create something that had never been done here. “It started my whole career,” he recalled.

This is when he changed his name to Tom Davii for his brand with the contemporary marker illustration.

Working on the MARTA project

Higgins said the design he submitted to be considered for the mosaics at the Five Points station was on a theme of peach and dark green.

“I blended in Gladys Knight with the MARTA station. I had a guy with his guitar sitting in the MARTA station with different colors that coexist with our scheme,” he said. “They say we love it. This is great.”

But the folks behind the Five Points station designs came back to him two months later saying that while they love that design, they want more ‘Atlanta.’

This meant Higgins’ first three designs that helped him earn his role in the new station’s artwork will not be used.

It was back to work creating new designs. He learned that they want his style and creativity, but wanted it to reflect their vision.

“You just gotta have patience,” he said. “and be willing and be open to change.”

An entrepreneural couple

Thomas and Rebecca Higgins both run their own businesses, helping each other with their project.

“I’m that person that really critiques his work,” she said. “I’m like, you can do better like if you try to present something like this in the proposal.”

For Thomas, Rebecca serves as one of his three critics who tell him what they think of his work.

Coming out of nearly 10 years working in the corporate world, Rebecca found herself laid off when COVID-19 hit.

This inspired her to create her own intimate micro wedding business, where she plans ceremonies and puts everything together for 50 people or less.

“You have a smaller wedding, you can put more money into the honeymoon,” she explained. Rather than putting $80,000 into a wedding, the money can go for the honeymoon or toward a house.

Thomas assists her with her work as well, noting that she got busy faster with hers than he has with his business.