Chuck Dickerson had barely stepped into manhood when, at the tender age of 21, his life suddenly changed. The path he’s been on since then has been tough but fulfilling.

The 50-year-old landscape artist has become a regular presence at North Star Mart on Route 14 in Mathews, where he sets up his easel several times a week and paints landscapes from memory. A bright, beating sun doesn’t stop him, even during the hottest part of the day.  A piece he was working on recently was darkly colorful—a forest path surrounded by lush, flowering undergrowth. The path looked both inviting and forbidding. Dickerson named the work “Pathway to Paradise.”

Perhaps the most striking thing about Dickerson’s appearance is the two brightly-painted mechanical prosthetics that he wears in place of the arms he lost as a young man. Slender metal pincers serve as fingers that he uses to hold his brushes. To sign a painting, he holds the end of the brush between his tee...