Mary Tillman Smith (1904 – 1995)

Works for sale by Mary T Smith 

Mary Tillman Smith spent her entire life in Mississippi where she scratched out a living as a tenant farmer and domestic cook. She began to create in 1980 after her son had stacked some tin in her yard with which he intended to build a shed. Mary painted the tin with images of animals and created large human figures and hung them on her fence. After she finished the fence, she began to paint on boards and placed them throughout her yard. She created an environment of over one acre before she was finished. Today, there is virtually no evidence that the environment ever existed. Her work is usually single-color female portraits, depicted as haunting, stick-figure-like heads. She usually used no more than three colors, but more often than not the figures were of one color, usually black. Her tin work is highly prized and as the years pass even her work on plywood is becoming increasingly hard to find. She has been featured in several exhibitions and is considered to be one of the most important American Folk Artists of the 20^th century.

Works for sale by Mary T Smith