Self-taught African-American artist Jimmy Lee Sudduth died on September 2, 2007 at the age of 97. Mr. Sudduth died at the Fayette Medical Center in his lifelong hometown of Fayette, Alabama. Mr. Sudduth was internationally renowned for his inventive and joyful mud paintings on plywood. Born in Caines Ridge, Alabama in 1910, Sudduth first began painting with mud when he was three, and was fond of saying that he could identify 36 different shades of mud around his rural Alabama home. He augmented his mud images with the colors created by grasses, wild berries, and housepaint. His subjects ranged from Southern mansions and cotton picking to self-portraits, his beloved dog Toto (of which there were several), and New York City skyscrapers. Mr. Sudduth outlived two wives and a son. He had many relatives in the area around Fayette, and would often entertain them and his many admirers with his exuberant harmonica playing and his painting demonstrations. Even after he was in poor health and was no longer painting, he continued to attract a steady stream of fans and admirers with his warmth and wit. From January 15 through March 27, 2005, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts mounted a major exhibition of paintings by Jimmy Lee Sudduth. A beautiful hardcover companion book to the exhibition, entitled "Jimmy Lee Sudduth", is available at www.amazon.com (type "Jimmy Lee Sudduth" into the search function). This page was last updated on April 29, 2008.
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