- The daughter of sharecroppers, many of Dot Courson’s paintings are simply memories etched forever, as seen through the eyes of a little girl.
If Dot Courson’s mid-life career change had not led to oil painting, it might have led to writing great novels. Her vast “Rural South Collection” paintings tell personal stories with light, color, and mood. But, oh, she can tell you precisely what she was thinking when she put paint to canvas. Her words are as from her heart to your heart as any gifted writer’s prose has ever been.
Dot’s work is displayed in private collections and prominent public spaces worldwide. She is a sought-after consultant, art jurist, and winner of many coveted awards. Still, she is also as downhome Mississippi as that neighbor who keeps you covered in fresh vegetables from her garden all summer.
Warmth and nurturing painted into Courson’s work
Perhaps her upbringing echoes in the scenes of rural shacks, cotton fields, sunrises, sunsets, winding dirt roads, lush woodland paths and marshes, sunflowers, bayous, Cypress trees, and so much more. Her paintings are first-person accounts of all of us who cherish our roots. She says, “I want those who view my paintings to come away feeling nurtured.” Her artistic renderings are indeed that and guaranteed to conjure up the best memories of home — either the one you had or the one you wish you had had.
Dot was the daughter of sharecroppers, who were also children of sharecroppers. Although her parents made their home in Alcorn County near Kossuth, her favorite childhood memories, all occurring before the age of nine, were summers spent with her Mamaw and Papaw in the Mississippi Delta. Many of her paintings of cotton fields are simply memories etched forever, as seen through the eyes of a little girl.
Courson captures nature through her childhood lens
When a friend commented that the cotton in her paintings seemed taller than natural cotton, Dot realized there was an explanation. Indeed, she was about four years old when she ran through the fields or lay down next to the endless rows of cotton to watch the sun streaming across miles and miles of flat turf. She has held on to those memories for sixty-plus years, and when she paints cotton, she paints it perfectly through the eyes of her four-year-old self.
Of all her thousands of paintings over the decades, she names her favorite Tracing Steps…Back to the Delta. Those days at her Mamaw and Papaw’s house were jam packed with childhood innocence and a sensual appreciation for sunrise, sunset, damp cotton in the dew-filled mornings, and light, fluffy, warm cotton in the late afternoon. She marveled at the sights, sounds, and even the air around her. Despite the passage of time and the circumstances that removed her from that idyllic summer tradition, the scenes in her mind’s eye remain fresh.
Dot’s artistic father frequently did sketches on request from other people. To Dot’s knowledge, he never charged a dime, and nobody ever paid him. He was a farmer, later a factory worker, and also deaf. She describes him as “the sweetest man ever,” although his disabilities, including a severe speech impediment, significantly limited his life.
Love of learning was Courson’s one constant
Her mother had a mental disorder impairing her ability to be a stable, nurturing parent. She had good days and bad days, and Dot, at nine years old, was thrust into the foster care system. There would be no more lazy, laid-back summers at her grandparents’ warm, welcoming old house beside the cotton field. Everything in her world changed. Dot did not attend school for three years as she was shuffled here and there.
She was significantly behind her peers when she returned to school for the first time in three years. She dropped out soon after, married at sixteen, and entered the workforce with an eighth-grade education.
But she did not drop out of learning. Dot Courson was homeschooling herself before homeschooling was cool! She and her husband, Jackie, who was attending Mississippi State, settled in Starkville for a few years. Dot became a regular visitor at the university library, checking out literary classics, instruction, and educational books.
Dot juggled her hunger for learning with her job as a nursing assistant at the Bruce, Mississippi Hospital, a job she landed only because her landlady was the Director of Nursing. Her superiors noticed her work ethic and her intellect. They pressed her to take the GED (General Education Diploma), which she passed with flying colors, and then they offered to pay all her expenses to nursing school.
Three nursing degrees later, with several meaningful jobs in the interim, Dot found herself working in home health administration.
Passion fueled Courson’s journey to renowned artist
She continued painting on the side and displayed her work in several galleries across the state, but art was just “something else she liked to do.” Dot had yet to learn she could make a living as a full-time painter.
Her lifelong learner gene was constantly pushing her. She found the perfect local teacher in Billy Kirk of Booneville and Corinth. She attended his classes at night. She credits him with teaching her “how to learn and what books I should study.”
“There were no videos at that time,” Dot says. She read and re-read those instruction books by the master artists and calls herself “fortunate” to have been so gainfully employed that she could purchase every book her mentor recommended. She poured over them.
No officially enrolled art major read more than Dot Courson. She laughs that her library of books on painting is enormous, but she is so proud that it is, and those books line the bookcases in her studio. They are treasures.
In 2004, she let her nursing license lapse. She never dreamed she would do that, but her art had become a full-time “pastime.” She loved her career and her art. There were only 24 hours in a day, and she needed twice that to do both. She became a full-time artist.
Some of Dot’s present work is on display at Oxford Treehouse Gallery just outside of Oxford, Mississippi. However, most of Dot’s prolific work is displayed in her studio and gallery outside Pontotoc, just off Highway 278 on Hidden Creek. She welcomes guests by appointment. It is so worth a stop if you are in the area. With large windows, gallery lighting, and classroom space, it is an artist’s dream. In addition to an abundance of Dot’s work, she represents her daughter, Susan Patton, one of the best portrait artists in the South.
One of Dot’s favorite side-lines these days is hosting workshops in that home studio. Visiting master artists teach aspiring painters from as far away as Australia, New York, Canada, and up and down the East Coast. Serving inspiration and skill with a heavy dose of Southern hospitality, the local bed-and-breakfast inns also lend their welcoming charm. When all is said and done, Mississippi always gains a few new international ambassadors.
Read more about Dot Courson and view her work at www.dotcourson.com.
Marilyn Tinnin
