Tella Kitchen.
(1902-1988, Ohio)
Revival Starts Tonight.
1975.
Signed, dated, and titled on verso.
Oil on canvas.
Excellent condition.
Image is 30"w x 24"h.
Frame is 37"w x 31"h.
Provenance: Slotin Folk Art Auction, 2017.
The Mike Dale Collection.
Est.$4,000-$6,000.
Ship: $150

Tella Kitchen was born Tella Denehue on February 14, 1902, the daughter of an Irish immigrant father and a mother whose family was from Pennsylvania. As a girl, Kitchen lived on a small farm in the rolling hills of Vinton County, Ohio, and a few years later her family moved to an equally rural farm near Independence, Indiana. At age 18 she married Noland Kitchen, and returned with him to Adelphi, Ohio, where they raised four children, operated a gas station, sold used cars, and farmed. When her husband died in 1963, Kitchen succeeded him as mayor of their small community, the first woman to ever be elected to that post. Kitchen had a full life, surrounded by grandchildren and more than a dozen great-grandchildren. But as she remembered her childhood, she longed for a way to preserve and share those memories with her growing family.

The opportunity to do just that presented itself when her son Denny gave her a set of paints as a gift. After one failed lesson from a professional artist at the local senior center, Kitchen decided that "I was too old to paint newfangled things, and I just began to paint the simple things I remembered and loved."So, at around 67 years of age, Kitchen drew on her childhood memories and experiences to bring to life rural midwestern America of the early 20th century. Entirely self-taught, her paintings are brimming with authenticity and detail, and her use of color and perspective are spot on.

Tella Kitchen's work has received national recognition and is in the permanent collection of the American Folk Art Museum, New York. Her work has been praised in numerous books on folk art, including Robert Bishop's Folk Painters of America (E. P. Dutton, New York, 1979), Jay Johnson's and William C. Ketchum, Jr.'s American Folk Art of the Twentieth Century (Rizzoli, New York, 1983), and Chuck and Jan Rosenak's Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Folk Art and Artists, Abbeville Press, New York, 1990.