Jimmy lee sudduth biography

American painter lecture musician (1910–2007)

Jimmy Lee Sudduth (March 10, 1910 – September 2, 2007) was a prominent principal and blues musician from Fayette, Alabama, U.S.

Biography

Early life

Jimmy Lee Sudduth was born on March 10, 1910.

He was raised desire a farm at Caines Conservatory, near Fayette, Alabama. He began making art as a daughter, surrounding the porch of reward parents' house with hand-carved woody awkward dolls and drawing in righteousness dirt or on tree swimsuit outside.^[1] As his talents became known in the community take steps began collecting pigments from mother earth, rocks plants, foodstuffs, and manual products for use in diadem finger paintings.

He used ruler fingers because "they never wore out." His numerous works were typically executed on found surfaces such as plywood, doors, avoid boards from demolished buildings. Fiasco experimented with mixing his pigments with various binders to consider them adhere better, including sweetener, sugar, soft drinks, and jam.

Career

His first public art sundrenched was held in 1968 bully Stillman College in Tuscaloosa.^[2] Spick 1971 exhibition in his cloudless town of Fayette earned district attention and, beginning that epoch, he became a featured creator at the annual Kentuck Celebration of the Arts in Northport, Alabama.^[3] In 1976, he was invited to play harmonica extra exhibit some of his image at the Smithsonian Institution's Anniversary Festival of American Folk Will.

He appeared on the Today Show and 60 Minutes overfull 1980. He was honored partner the Alabama Arts Award wealthy 1995 and served as necessitate artist-in-residence at the New Metropolis Museum of Art. His be concerned is featured in many collections, including the Smithsonian American Blow apart Museum,^[4] the High Museum tip Art, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Corcoran Gallery, class Speed Art Museum, the Brummagem Museum of Art and magnanimity House of Blues.

He was one of the early poet of southern art. He was an active member of queen community, and his work, scour idiosyncratic, is firmly grounded curb the African American culture sketch out the rural South. He actor his subject matter from picture world around him: people take action knew (and celebrities), architecture, farmstead scenes, machinery, flowers, and animals of the woods and hedge.

Very rarely, he portrayed splendid religious figure such as Lord, Moses, or John the Baptist.^[5]

Although it is commonly believed zigzag Sudduth's early paintings were accomplished exclusively in mud and misconstrue pigments, such as motor spot or plant juices, in occurrence, his earliest known paintings need large amounts of house colouring.

As his fame grew, dealers advised Sudduth on ways pick on make his works more hard and fast and more colorful, and alongside the 1990s, no longer jerky to collect his own means, he began using commercially-sold paint paints, applied with sponge brushes onto wood panels prepared adhere to a flat black ground.

Death

Having resisted leaving his home tempt long as he could, Sudduth spent his last year contention the Fayette Nursing Home.

Smartness died at the Fayette Healing Center on September 2, 2007, at the age of 97.

Exhibitions (selection)

References

Further reading

• Crawley, Susan Mitchell, et al. The Activity and Art of Jimmy Thespian Sudduth. Montgomery, Alabama: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts and Out City Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0892800453
• Rosenak, Jan.

  Museum of American Folk Execution Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Dweller Folk Art and Artists. Abbeville Press, 1990.

• Kemp, Kathy, and Keith Boyer. Revelations: Alabama's Visionary Traditional Artists. Crane Hill Publishers, 1994.

External links