Come
Walk with Me
The Art of Dorris Curtis
with an Introduction by Robert Cochran
Memory paintings of a bygone era.
Come
Walk with Me: The Art of Dorris Curtis has enormous
appeal both as a memoir and as a collection of wonderful
paintings. Dorris Curtis, like Grandma Moses, began painting
at a late age. She worked as a school teacher for over forty
years and upon retirement at the age of sixty-five, began
to study art. Curtis looked up to Grandma Moses and was
heavily influenced by her achievements.
This
book includes 103 images of Curtis’s artwork, each
with an extended caption, as well as an introduction by
Robert Cochran which places Curtis’s art into the
larger context of both Arkansas art and American folk art
as a whole.
Dorris
Curtis began painting at the age of sixty-five. Since her
start in 1973, Curtis’s work has been exhibited in
Chicago and Washington, D.C., and she has appeared as a
guest on the PBS series American Art Forum. Curtis recently
donated her entire collection to the University of Central
Arkansas.
“Don’t
be fooled by the similarity to Grandma Moses. Arkansas’s
own Dorris Curtis is not a true ‘primitive’
painter, nor is there anything primitive about her delightful
memoir of her life and her own descriptions of her paintings.
Everyone should heed the invitation to come walk with her.”
—Don
Harington, Arkansas novelist and art historian
“Dorris
Curtis’s paintings capture the spirit of rural life
in Arkansas and the natural beauty of our state with remarkable
skill and grace, and I display her work proudly in my Washington,
D.C., office. Dorris is an Arkansas treasure.”
—Blanche
Lincoln, U.S. senator from Arkansas
“This
collection of sophisticated paintings will appeal to anyone
interested in painting or the history and culture of Oklahoma
and Arkansas.”
—Margaret
Bolsterli, professor emerita of English at the University
of Arkansas and author of Born
in the Delta: Reflections on the Making of a Southern White
Sensibility (Arkansas, 2000) and Vinegar
Pie and Chicken Bread: A Woman’s Diary of Life in
the Rural South (Arkansas, 1982)
2004
9” X 12”
249 pages
103 color plates
$39.95 (s) cloth
978-1-55728-764-9 | 1-55728-764-3
