Sybil Gibson - 1908 - 1995

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Born Sybil Aaron in Dora, Alabama, Sybil was the daughter of a successful coalmine operator. Despite this, she spent the vast majority of her life in poverty. 

Sybil was well educated and eventually became an elementary school teacher. She moved from Alabama to Florida in the 1940s. Sybil did not lead a happy life. It is evident that her marriage failed not once, but twice and she left her only daughter to be raised by her parents.

Sybil in 1926 at age 18

Even though she was a troubled soul, Sybil had a lot to offer. She was struck with the urge to create at the age of 50. With no training and no previous inclination toward painting, she started with the materials at hand; grocery bags and powdered tempura. Through the next thirty-five years she used these materials to create haunting images.

Sybil's main themes consist of haunting portraits, the eyes of which project a sense of longing that is hard to describe.  Her innate sense of color and form combined to create some of the most beautiful florals and still-lifes since Renoir. 

Sybil painted on whatever was at hand, but her preferred medium was plain brown grocery sacks. She would soak the brown paper bags in water and paint on them with tempura or watercolor  while they were still wet. This technique creates soft, blended color which lends to the melancholy of each piece. 

Painting for Sybil was a compulsion that blotted out her former life. Shortly before the opening of her first art exhibition at the Miami Museum of Modern Art in May 1971, Gibson disappeared, leaving drawings scattered about her yard. Unfortunately a number of Sybil Gibson's paintings were lost to the elements. 

She had a habit of  disappearing from time to time and when she moved on, she simply left her paintings behind. In 1971 the Miami Museum of Modern Art gave Sybil a one-woman show. Although well received, not many of her works were sold.  Shortly after, she moved back to Alabama and in 1981, entered a home for the elderly. By that time, her sight was beginning to fail and so her daughter arranged for her return to Florida for a cataract operation, which restored her deteriorating sight.

Sybil then moved into a home for the aged in Florida, close to her daughter, where she painted until her death. Sybil Gibson died January 2, 1995. She was eighty-six. She had had 50 one woman shows and is acclaimed by critics and collectors alike. Her work has been compared to that of such celebrated artists as Renoir, Gaugin and Van Gogh.  Indeed, Sybil's contribution to the world of art cannot be confined to Outsider Art alone.  We believe that Sybil Gibson is one of the most important vernacular artists that America has ever produced.  

Today, Sybil's work is included in the permanent collections of eight Museums including the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama; the Museum of American Folk Art, New York and the New Orleans Museum of Art in Louisiana.

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