Jimmy Lee Sudduth.
Self-Portrait With Striped Shirt.
Signed.
Sweet mud and paint on board.
Excellent condition.
Image is 24"w x 48"h.
Frame is 25"w x 49"h.
Provenance: The Mike Dale Collection.
Est. $1,000-$2,000.
Ship: $200

Jimmy Lee Sudduth was born on March 10, 1910, and was raised on a farm near Fayette, Alabama. Sudduth's adoptive mother was a medicine woman, and as a child he accompanied her into the woods to gather plants. On one of those trips when he was three, he drew a picture with a mixture of mud and honey on a tree stump, and when he and his mother returned a few days later, the picture was still there. She saw this as a good sign and encouraged her son to continue to paint.

As a young man growing up during the Great Depression, Sudduth did what he had to do to earn a living, working on rural farms, grinding corn in a grist mill, and working in a lumber yard. Around 1950 he moved to the town of Fayette and made his living as a handyman and gardener. Sudduth was very popular with the townspeople, always eager to make someone a painting and to share a tune on his harmonica (he was an accomplished blues musician). Sudduth married twice and outlived both wives.

As his artistic talents became known in the community, Sudduth began to experiment with creating his own homemade paint, made by mixing mud with other substances (or by rubbing them directly onto his painting surface)—soot, axle grease, coffee grounds, ground brick and charcoal, turnip greens, flower petals, berries, flour, tree sap, walnut shells, egg yolks and much more—to give his mixture color and texture. He would also use leftover house paint donated by neighbors. Sudduth continued to paint with his mud mixture, but there was a problem: once dry, the mud would flake off. He realized he needed to add something to give the mud staying power, and he discovered that sticky substances like Coca-Cola, honey, molasses, sorghum, and common sugar would do the trick: his "sweet mud"was born.

Completely self-taught, Sudduth applied and worked his mud mixture with his fingers because "they never wore out." His numerous works were typically executed on found and repurposed materials such as sheet metal, scrap lumber, and plywood.Sudduth's fertile imagination created memorable works depicting everything from everyday life in Alabama—houses and mansions, work, people, self-portraits, farm animals, flowers, his beloved dog, Toto—to New York City skyscrapers, Washington landmarks, famous people, imaginary creatures, and occasionally, religious figures.

Sudduth achieved a great deal of fame in his lifetime. In 1971, he became a featured artist at the annual Kentuck Festival of the Arts in Northport, AL, and was always a crowd favorite. In 1976, he was invited to play harmonica and exhibit some of his paintings at the Smithsonian Institution's Bicentennial Festival of American Folk Life. In 1980, Sudduth appeared on the Today Show and 60 Minutes. His work is included in many collections, including the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., and the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL. In the last years of his life, Sudduth was plagued by health problems, but he never stopped painting until he was placed in a nursing home about six months before his death at the age of 97.