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Birmingham, AL Sybil Gibson 1908-1995 Paintings

Information: Sybil Gibson was born February 18, 1908 in Dora Alabama. Her father was a prosperous coal mine operator but she lived most of her adult life in poverty. Sybil was college educated, an elementary school teacher, a mother of one daughter, interested in real estate and the financial market. She began paining in November 1963 at 55 years old when she became enchanted with a piece of gift wrapping paper in a downtown Miami Florida store. When she picked up a brush to create her own wrapping paper with materials at hand ... tempera and brown paper bags ... she was seized with a compulsion to paint that lasted three decades. Her difficult years, in which she was beset by health and financial problems, pushed her to the braking point and in 1971, just after her work had attracted the attention of the Miami Art Museum, she returned to Alabama. In Birmingham she lived in a seedy hotel, continued to paint, received high praise from critics, but sold few paintings. In 1981 she moved to a home for the elderly in Jasper Alabama. Finally she moved to a facility in Florida where she was closer to her daughter. An operation restored most of her sight, and she was able to keep working on her art. Her pictures most often depicting people, animals and sometimes flowers, are painted with tempera and house paint on paper bags and newspaper. The subtlety of color and impressionistic quality comes from her practice of wetting the bag or newspaper and painting the image before the bag or newspaper would dry. Sybil died in a nursing home January 2, 1995 in Dunedin Florida. Her work is in many museum collections including the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Fayette Art Museum, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Museum of American Folk Art. America Oh Yes

	Reference / Links:
	Home page Ginger Young Gallery: "Sybil Gibson" Grey Carter Objects Of Art: "Sybil Gibson" Modern Primitive: "Sybil Gibson" Robert Cargo Folk Art Gallery: "Sybil Gibson" Anton Haardt Gallery (under Artists): "Sybil Gibson" The Zetter Collection: "Sybil Gibson" Slotin Folk Art Marsha Weber / Art Objects America Oh Yes
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Bibliography: "Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Folk Art and Artists" by Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Abbeville Press, New York, 1990. "20th Century American Folk, Self Taught, and Outsider Art" by Betty-Carol Sellen, Cynthia J. Johnson, Neal-Schuman Publishers, New York, 1993. "Contemporary American Folk Art - A Collector's Guide" Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Abbeville Press, 1996. "American Self-Taught Art: An Illustrated Analysis of 20th Century Artists and Trends with 1,319 Capsule Biographies" by Florence Laffal and Julius Laffal, 2003. "Wos Up Man?" Selections from the Joseph D. and Janet M. Sheen Collection of Self-taught Art" Palmer Museum of Art, 2005. Slotin Folk Art Auction Catalog, Masterpiece Sale, November 4, 2006

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