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Excerpt from Bettye's Autobiography
Once Bettye started painting . .
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"On fire now, I dragged out the card table and built my first
studio in a corner of the dining room. I did not set out to seek fame
and fortune as an artist I merely set out! Painting on plywood, my next
two paintings were of barns and both hang in my Florida room. Now I was
getting serious about this painting thing, so I invested in a couple of
good brushes, several tubes of paint, and a honest-to-goodness canvas.
This time when I sat in front of my drawing board, which still looked a
whole lot like the old card table that it was, I said a prayer that went
something like this. Lord, you know I don't know the least thing about
art and I don't have the faintest idea of what to do next but you know
the desires of my heart. I want to learn to paint, so if you will help
me, you will get the credit for anything I do well what I mess up, I'll
take the blame for. I have tried to adhere to that, taking as little
credit for each painting as possible, by signing each one with an
abbreviated signature B.Wms. instead of my full name. After all these
years, I still dedicate each finished painting to God and ask Him to see
that it gets to the person for whom it is intended. I think He does
just that." BWms |
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Because of her subject matter, the artwork is sometimes called
"Backwoodsy Florida Art." Bony milk cows and the affection seeking hound
dog are part of Bettye Williams attention to detail and emotion, a
talent for making the once common event an extraordinary painting. This
is rendered in her earlier paintings as well as her paintings today.
Bettye
Williams' adventure into the art world has turned into a small
industry. Her husband, Hal a retired chemical engineer is her "right
hand." He does all of her shipping from the sales on the Internet. Hal
makes the frames for paintings and prints. Since some of the frames for
the orange crates with labels have the frame as part of the art piece,
Hal is contributing to the art piece itself.
The women in
Bettye's family share a special relationship. One of Bettye's favorite
painters is memory painter Virginia (Dissie) Dixon, her sister. Their
mother Martha, "Mama Jarvis" is involved with both her daughters'
creative lives, as she was when they were children. As a young adult,
Bettye was interested in journalism/writing. She was the editor of her
school paper and on graduation received a journalism award. Bettye will
tell you, "In high school, art was not my thing." |
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ONE SUCH MEMORY...
"I was a majorette with my High School band and
once when the band was marching at a football half-time show, I glanced
at the sidelines and could see people laughing and pointing at me. I
thought perhaps my gold satin 'bloomers' had fallen off or something.
The boy beating the bass drum who marched directly behind me said,
'Bebe, look behind you!' so of course I did, and there to my chagrin,
was good old Johnny, our newest bird dog, with orange and blue crepe
paper tied to his collar, (some kids had decorated him with paper from
the goal posts) trailing along behind him. You wouldn't believe how
pleased he was with himself. I kept hissing at him to 'Go back!' and
every time I did, he would look up at me and bark. I was mortified! He
stuck to me like white on rice the whole half time show. I could have
pinched every one of his brown freckles off.
"Two or three weeks
later, I was called to the principal's office. It scared me to death,
as I couldn't imagine what I had done. As it turned out, Johnny had
come to school and proceeded directly to the principal's office. We
didn't have air conditioning back then, so all the doors remained open
during the day. Since he had made himself 'famous' at the football game,
he was recognized as the 'Jarvis bird dog' so I was summoned to call my
Mama to come get him and take his ornery self back home. He was so
happy to see me, I just couldn't be too angry with him. Did you know
that brown-freckled bird dogs actually smile?" BWms |
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"Martha, my mama inherited her love for cows from my grandmother whose
name was Addie. All the grandchildren called her, 'Mammy'. Mammy
thought cows had beautiful eyes and while I did not inherit a particular
fondness for any member of the bovine population, I have to admit they
do have soulfully limpid brown eyes.
"Years before I started painting, I took a picture of
two of her cows whose names were Trudy and Judy. One of them had a calf
named Bully. In the picture, they appeared to be underfed while in
fact, all three of them should have been in 'bovine heaven'. Several
weeks before the picture was taken, the cows had eaten wilted leaves
from a wild cherry tree limb than had been struck by lightning and had
fallen over into my folk's pasture. Wilted wild cherry leaves are
extremely poisonous to cows and may be to other animals, I'm not sure.
One of them had managed to get back to the cow pen and Daddy immediately
called the vet. By the time the vet arrived the other cow was found in
the back of the pasture, lying at the point of death, under the shade
of an enormous pecan tree. The less sicker of the two was given a shot
and was expected to live, the other one was past the point of no return
and the vet said she should be left for nature to administer to. That
sounded a whole lot like 'leave her to the buzzards' to my Mama.
"Not
one to leave her old friend to the birds of prey, she had some of the
men hoist the cow to an upright position and bring her home in a tobacco
sled. Mama then laid hands on Trudy, who was very pregnant at the time
with Bully and prayed to God to heal not only the mother cow but also
the calf she was carrying. Almost instantly, Trudy lowed --that's
groaning to my way of thinking--and began to purge the poison from her
system from all orifices available to her. Mama promptly claimed the
healing a done deal, gave God all the glory, and went back to the house.
By that afternoon Trudy was up and walking around--still very
pregnant. When the calf was born several weeks later and in perfect
health, his name could only be 'Bully' as he was too stubborn to die
because his Mom had indulged in wild cherry leaves.
"Mama
remembers vividly that years ago in a cracker house located near the
Georgia State line, she and a dear old black mid wife named Aunt Emma
were laboring to get me delivered, they could hear a cow somewhere out
in the dark lowing and laboring to bring her calf into the world. Both
she and Aunt Emma sympathized with the cow. I'm sure she was
remembering this when she prayed for her sick and pregnant friend,
Trudy.
"I used the picture for my visual reference for the
painting, the feed trough was empty, and it looked like the calf, Bully,
was asking his mother why it was empty, so I titled the painting,
'Where's The Fodder, Mudder'. My oldest son, Kelly, thought I should
have titled it Where's the Fodder, UDDER Mudder' I explained you could
stretch artist's license just so far..." BWms |
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"When Martha Jarvis was just a young girl, a friend taught her to make
'palmetto posies'. At the time they called them 'toad frog houses'. It
was a fun thing to do and something to do with her hands as Martha was
not one to waste time just sitting. She had heard many a time in her
young life that 'idle hands was the devil's workshop' and she certainly
didn't want any part of him--for sure! Shortly thereafter, with so many
other things for a young girl to learn, the toad frog house making was
replaced with work. The memory resurface when she was 81 years of age
while fishing off her dock for speckled perch. Still one to waste no
time just sitting (and watching for her red bobber to sink), she cut the
heart out of a palmetto nearby (don't worry folks, they grow back) and
commenced to dredge up the childhood memory of the intricately woven
'posies', a name later given it by one of her daughters, who did not
think anything so beautiful should be remotely connected with a 'toad'.
Not only did Martha remember how to weave them, but taught her two
daughters how to weave them.
"Before long, with creative juices
'awash', the three of them came up with many variations of the posies,
such as Chinese Lanterns, Gladiolas, Mosquito Hawk Wings, and
Cascades--just to name a few. Wonderful arrangements can be made with
these, either alone or combined with other dried items such as Spanish
Moss, grapevines, cattails, just about anything. They become even
lovelier as they dry, turning a soft shade of blond and will last almost
forever if loved. It is thought they like to be 'talked' to in the
same fashion as live plants and they love music.
"Martha's posies
have been prominently displayed in such distinguished establishments as
Main Street Gallery, Clayton Gallery in Georgia and Dolene's Art and
Antiques in Bartow, Florida, The Florida Museum of Art and Culture,
Sebring, Florida Arts in the Park, Lakeland, Florida, and other places.
"Martha
was doubly blessed the day her 'posy memory' was jogged, not only did
she have a mess of fish for supper, she had a whole stem full of
palmetto posies. Martha would love to share her palmetto posies with
you and if you are ever around Lake Wales, Florida she might share her
'fishing secrets'." BWms |
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| Bettye about 15 years-old. |
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"fly away hair" then and alas, "fly
away hair" still . . . |
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Bettye says, "the one with the tongue
sticking out isn't me." |
"Dissie and I were the only two grandchildren on Daddy's side of the
family and Aunt Mae never had any children of her own so my sister and I
were blessed with essentially two grandmothers. In fact, my oldest son
couldn't tell my Granny and Aunt Mae apart. He called them both
Granny. I called Aunt Mae Granny Mae and my grandmother simply, Granny'
so as not to confuse him.
She really had a hard life, being
raised on the farm, helping her two younger brothers. She married a
farmer so hard work continued to be her lot in life.
I remember
visiting her once in Morven, Georgia, where the two of them were share
cropping. At that time, she was trying to raise three little pigs
(Three little pigs. That has a familiar ring . . .) whose mama had
died. I?m sure she needed that around-the-clock job added to the ones
she already had about as much as she needed another hole in her head.
She was feeding them with a bottle and to a six year old, it looked like
Big fun . . . so I proceeded to beg my mama to let me take one home for
a pet. She tried to explain to me that we had no place to raise a pig
in town--- pigs had to live on a farm. I, with all the wisdom of a
child, explained that I would raise it in the bathtub. Granny Mae just
laughed and laughed and never forgot my begging and crying for that
little pig. I did not think it was a bit funny and I pouted severely
all the way home.
Granny Mae laughed a lot. So do I. We had a
special rapport. Just a few years ago, we were all raking the yards at
our lake house where we gathered to spend the weekend. Our plan was to
grill steaks after we got the yard raked and everything cleaned up.
Mama, Dissie, and I had already started raking but Granny Mae was
dragging up the rear. I told her she'd better get on the stick and she
said she didn't think she wanted to rake. So I said, OKAY LADY, NO RAKE
NO STEAK! She grabbed that rake and began to scatter leaves and dirt
like you wouldn't believe. We all got so tickled. What a wonderful
memory!
She lived to be in her seventies and spent her last
year in my home. I loved her and took care of her. We loved and
laughed, right up to the end of her time here on earth. Hours before
she went to be with the Lord, she was pointing to someone (an angel
maybe?) on the other side of the room that nobody but she could see.
She had the most beautiful and happy expression on her face.
She
was our Granny Mae . . . how happy the Lord must have been to see her
come through the Pearly Gates. We will all laugh together again in
heaven, no doubt."
(My middle name is Mae but don't tell
anybody!) BWms |
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| The day these pictures were taken, Betty was with two of her best
friends, Martha, her mother and her sister Dissie. All the photographs
we took of Bettye that day appear to be out of focus; yet, objects
around her are sharper. After checking the equipment and film for flaws,
the photographs taken before and after Bettye's, we looked to Bettye
Williams for answers. |
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We told her about the thick fog in the photographs and asked, "Bettye,
what are you doing to the camera?" Bettye's reply, They always seem to
have a problem taking my picture. Pictures of me seem to be fuzzy.
Bettye said that when her image was fuzzy as a child, it was explained,
"You were born with the veil." |
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