well known Louisiana artist, children walking to school, quaint or primitive style, on masonite, image area 16" X 20"......Ann Lewis Dupre was born in 1936 in the South Louisiana town of Opelousas, a community of predominately French culture, but one that had notable Anglo-Saxon influences as well as Hispanic, Middle Eastern and Jewish societies as well. The place was not unlike that of the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Ann's father was both a lawyer and district attorney there.She was a largely self-taught painter, although she did study Fine Arts at Louisiana State University. Lou Richmond, the well-remembered antique dealer in Baton Rouge, promoted Ann's work throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s when the painter's life became more mobile.Ann's early paintings dealt with South Louisiana, the bayous and marshlands, but she also painted rare interiors and still-life paintings and hunting scenes. In subsequent years, she continued to paint in the same primitive style but in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia.Before the death of the New York art dealer Otto Kallir (of Grandma Moses fame), Kallir purchased two of Ann's paintings and added them to his private collection.Ann now lives in New Mexico where she paints scenes of both the north and the south of that state and its complex cultural landscape.Submitted by Stephanie Reeves, whose source is the family of the artist