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Nellie Mae Rowe Art

American, 1900-1982
Nellie Mae Rowe was born in 1900 in Fayetteville, Georgia, the ninth of 10 children. Her early life was spent in a rural farming community, where she and her siblings helped the family make a living through cotton harvesting and other farm work. Despite her busy life at the farm, Rowe developed an early love for drawing and doll-making, and her mother taught her how to make dresses and quilts. She would find time between chores, and even find places to hide, in order to continue creating. At age 16, Rowe married her first husband, who was also a rural farm worker. During this period she found little time to make art. Her first husband passed away in 1936, but that same year she remarried. Her second husband, however, also passed away by 1948. Following these hardships, Rowe found work as a maid to support herself, and finally had amply time to explore her own artistry. Rowe became incredibly prolific, producing drawings, dolls, sculptures made of chewing gum, and assemblages made of discarded objects including egg cartons, marbles, and other trinkets. She produced so much work that it began to fill her house and her yard, and her neighbors deemed her an eccentric and a “fortune teller”. Some locals tormented Rowe, throwing rocks, firecrackers, and rotten eggs at her house. However, over time she became a staple in her local community, dubbing her home the “playhouse”. People started to bring Rowe dolls, toys, beads, and other materials for her to use in her artwork. Although Rowe became well-known in her community, it was not until the mid-1970s that art collectors and curators began to take notice of her vast body of work. In 1978, she had her first solo exhibition at the Alexander Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1979, she left Georgia for the only time in her life to attend an exhibition of her work at the Parsons/Dreyfus Gallery in New York City. Her work attracted audiences with its striking and fantastical imagery, as well as its fixation with religious symbolism, social commentary, and the natural world. By the 1980s, Rowe had begun her battle with cancer. Unfortunately, due to her illness, she was unable to view her work in “Black Folk in America, 1900-1980,” a 1982 exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Rowe passed away that same year. Nellie Mae Rowe leaves behind countless artworks completely unlike those of the trained, mainstream artists of her day. Rowe experimented with countless media, color palettes, and visual motifs, giving her work a longevity that continues to connect with new generations of collectors and curators. Rowe’s works may be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.
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Artist: Nellie Mae Rowe
A Beautiful Day
By Nellie Mae Rowe
Located in Missouri, MO
A Beautiful Day, 1978 by Nellie Mae Rowe (American, 1900-1982) Unframed: 9" x 12" Framed: 11.25" x 14.25" Signed and Dated Lower Left Nellie Mae Rowe ...
Category

20th Century Folk Art Nellie Mae Rowe Art

Materials

Crayon, Pastel, Paper, Graphite

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Roger Cecil. Welsh ( b.1942 - d.2015 ). Llangorse, Brecon Beacons Watercolor and pastel on paper. Signed. Image size 19.5 inches x 29.5 inches ( 49.5cm x 75cm ). Frame size 24.6 inches x 34.6 inches ( 62.5cm x 88cm ). Available for sale; this original painting is by the Welsh artist Roger Cecil and dates from around 1964. The watercolor and pastel work is presented and supplied in a sympathetic contemporary frame (our stock frame, which is shown in these photographs), mounted using conservation materials and behind glass. The original backboard has been reused but the artwork has been isolated from it using conservation barrier materials. This vintage artwork is in good condition, commensurate with its age. Previous cockling (rippling) of the paper has been eliminated by stretching and the use of a new mounting. Previous foxing and age marks have been mechanically removed and the coarse fiber of the paper has been made good in these areas. The painting is now ready to hang and display. The watercolor is signed lower left. Provenance: Previously with the Howard Roberts Gallery, Imperial Buildings, 69/74 St Mary Street, Cardiff. Roger Cecil was a reclusive painter, draughtsman and teacher who was born in Abertillery, Monmouthshire in 1942. He lived and worked in Wales for the last four decades of his life, much of it in the house where he was born and brought up. Cecil produced abstract work rich in imagery, poetry and color, which were drawn from his environment, the industrial valley towns and mountains. Prolific and obsessive, he was always a solitary artist, with no affiliations to any group or artistic movement. He worked for more than forty years, with an ever evolving and prolific creative output. His pictures capture the geology and the history of the places he knew so intimately, and the impact of man of that environment. Cecil studied Fine Art at Newport College of Art from 1959 to 1963, where his teachers included John Wright and Thomas Rathmell; in 1963 he gained the College’s highest award in the national diploma in design and a place at the Royal College London. In 1964 he won the David Murray Landscape Award from the RA. He took up his place at the Royal College of Art, but after just a few weeks he was unsatisfied and instead took up manual work in opencast mines and building sites. Cecil later spent some time teaching at Ebbw Vale. From 1995 to 1998 he did his MA, which he gained with distinction in communication design at St. Martin’s College of Art. The BBC made a television documentary on Cecil's work called The Gentle Rebel. For a long time Cecil did not exhibit, through choice, and it was friends who helped to promote him. He then had a series of exhibitions at Business Art Galleries from 1987, and in 1995 the Hill Court Gallery, Abergavenny, held a retrospective of his work. In 1998 Gordon Hepworth and Y Tabernacl both showed Cecil's pictures. Cecil’s works were also shown at the Oriel Myrddin Gallery in 2006 and 20011. The small book which takes the name of the earlier exhibition ”Cariad”; has an introduction by gallery manager Meg Anthony which states; “The magic of Roger Cecil’s work is in part down to the man, for he is enigmatic and surprising, diffident and proud. He has deliberately avoided the art establishment, remaining shy of its protocol and systems of exposure and recognition. He has consciously created the space to pursue his art, away from the pressures of publicity and celebrity...... paint is Roger’s passion.” Cecil’s methods were complex; he worked with a mixture of materials, including oil pastels, sandpaper, primer and plaster. He built up layers and then he rubbed and scratched them away. His work is textured and nuanced, and the color reverberates as if it has a life of its own. The paintings are abstract, but there are echoes of monumental shapes and undulations of the female form, the Valleys - the dark hills embracing the bowls of space and the rich, gritty textures of the industrial and post-industrial landscape, highlighted by intricate, personal marks. Sarah Bradford states: “Scale is an important feature of Roger Cecil’s work; he constantly shifts from near and the far off. He also moves his viewpoint from looking at, to looking down on to. This looking down, as though a bird, onto the world of the painting, comes from exploration of his surroundings and from the ordinance survey maps he takes with him when he walks. He has often said how he is inspired by the language of symbols and lines that are used in maps to delineate the landscape. It is easy to see the connection when looking at the networks of invented footpaths, waterways, and other pinpoint features that can be found in his work.” … Mary Lloyd...
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Nellie Mae Rowe art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Nellie Mae Rowe art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Nellie Mae Rowe in crayon, graphite, paper and more. Not every interior allows for large Nellie Mae Rowe art, so small editions measuring 12 inches across are available.

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