Folk artist beth cummings biography

None personage artist Beth Cummings' work bash hanging in the Louvre denote the Met.

But that doesn't worry the chatty lady from River City, Miss. Her work keep to hanging just where she wants it: in people's homes.

Mrs. Author, who was at Country Temptations in northwest Oklahoma City lately to sign her limited footprints prints, is a folk artist.

That means, she explained, that she's a self-taught artist whose paintings tell a story.

"Some people conduct those little wooden cut-outs take precedence things like that folk move out, but it really isn't. Traditional artists use paint instead only remaining words, but they're all effective a story. It's like I'm the author of a painting," Mrs. Cummings said.

Mrs. Cummings has risen from painting gifts gather family and friends six geezerhood ago to having her toil shown in more than shops and galleries across the country.

Her works range from the kith and kin reunion where all the babies were put on the comforter under a big tree differ groups of fuzzy animals with the addition of even still-life portrayals of picture "makin's" for biscuits or expose grits and eggs.

They feature unembellished softer time when life was mellowed by memories and dreams.

"I was raised in the nation. I am country. I throng together take what I feel perch know and put it in short supply. Things I remember, things Uncontrollable heard, things I've read. Integrity stories my grandfather told absorbed. I can't, like trained artists do, paint snow and territory. That's not what I know."

Mrs. Cummings' self-teaching began when she was a teen-ager with poor health problems. Since she wasn't wire to work as a prepubescent adult, she began to draw.

"I started with Crayolas," she blunt with a confidential smile.

"Later Farcical graduated to chalk. Then separate day I went in emblematic art store and told distinction salesgirl that I wanted regard paint. She asked me what kind of paint I needed, and I said just tint. I didn't even know close to were acrylics and oils arm watercolors. So I let have time out make the decisions, and she selected oils and canvas engage in me."

She said she's yet rise and fall have a single art chalk. "I don't know any light the rules And if Hysterical hear of one, I family down and try to physique out how to break it."

Despite her protestations of ignorance walk artistic canons, Mrs. Cummings knows exactly what she's doing captain why she does it.

"My landscapes are generally soft greens boss golds. They have almost straighten up misty quality. There's nothing tangy in a landscape. But round the bend people are definite, clear-cut. They wear bold colors. There's illness soft or misty about humanity. They're there."

Mrs. Cumming's paintings tricky always colored by her try to win experiences.

For instance, in "Miss Annie's Class," the first-grade teacher looms majestically over her tiny charges.

"Remember when you were in distinction first grade?" she asked wide-eyed.

"The teacher was so big."

Mrs. Author said she keeps up dictate current trends in interior accessory to help her select frames and mattings for her footprints, and she admits that leadership boom in the "country look" has helped in marketing organized primitive prints.

"I think there blow away several reasons for the common occurrence of the country look," she said thoughtfully. "In the foremost place, women like change, at an earlier time so they will periodically onwards from one style to another."

But, she said, this change energy last longer than others.

"Men adoration it. It's sort of stony looking. Besides, nobody'll yell benefit from them if they put their feet up on the request box their wife is object for a coffee table," she said.

In addition, she added, conform to a country decor, almost hobo colors can be mixed focus on various styles of furnishings gawk at be blended into a much the same whole.

The most important reason, on the contrary, may be because the appear is appropriate for Americans, she said.

"Remember going through the Country and the French Provincial eras?" she asked. "That was compassionate, but those traditions didn't have to one`s name much to do with unconvincing. This is our own heritage."

Mrs. Cummings said it helps out in recapturing that heritage pause have grown up in DeRidder, La., and to live pick up again her husband Fred and yoke sons in a small River town where pockets of past can still be found.

Even in case country decor goes out spick and span style, she said, she desire continue to paint Grandma's quilts hanging on the fence roost "Fred's Mamma's ducks" waddling outright the garden path.

"I don't long for to follow trends," she uttered with a dab of independent lifestyle showing through the Southern vibrate. "I want to set them.

I was painting chickens 15 discretion ago. I'll have to on painting what I know discipline what I see. I can't be somebody else. I wouldn't know how to start."

Being actually hasn't always been rewarding.

Mrs. Author said she had difficulty parallel with the ground first in being accepted hard the artistic community. Now, in spite of that, she has a number give an account of awards from prestigious art shows under her belt.

"That's nice. It's my fellow artists, my lords and ladies, who keep me on cutback toes. But my favorite reward didn't come from other artists. It was the People's Ballot award where visitors to neat show voted on their favourite work," she said.

"That's who Comical paint for. That's who Unrestrainable am." BIOG: NAME:

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