Thank You For Making That

Do the thing you think you cannot do! 🎨

A piece of brilliant advice by Vincent van Gogh! 💙

Amen 👏

I absolutely love stories that include late starts. Art has no expiration date 🎨

Happy spring! Mattie Lou O'Kelley was born on a farm in Georgia. In her fifties, she began to paint and created idyllic scenes like this work depicting shapely hills, blossoming trees, and workers tending to fields. ⁠In her colorful scenes, the sun is almost always shining, the people are in motion, and the crops are plentiful.⁠
⁠
When O'Kelley passed away in 1997, The New York Times reported on the moment that Robert Bishop, an art dealer, and collector and later the director of the American Museum of Folk Art (in Manhattan), first encountered her work. In 1975, he was in Atlanta to lecture about quilts at the High Museum, and Gudmund Vigtel, the director of the museum, traveled to Atlanta by bus to show him O'Kelley's pictures. Bishop was astonished and immediately became entranced with the artist's ''unique vision.'' He immediately canceled his flight back to Detroit, where he was director of publications at the Henry Ford Museum, and drove 50 miles to find the artist, tracking her down in her one-room cabin in sleepy Maysville. They became friends and worked together to bring her work to the attention of museums and other collectors. ⁠
⁠
The Big Farm in the Spring; Mattie Lou O'Kelley (1908-1997), Maysville, Georgia; 1976; Oil on Canvas; 36 x 24"; gift of the artist; 1977.1.1.⁠
⁠
⁠
⁠