March 10, 1910

Outsider artist Jimmy Lee Sudduth was born in Caines Ridge, near Fayette. A self-taught artist, Sudduth is best known for creating finger paintings out of mud and other natural pigments on a variety of salvaged surfaces such as plywood boards, doors and roofing shingles. Sudduth spent almost his entire life in a modest house in Fayette, but his portraits and depictions of the rural South earned him international recognition. Sudduth won the 2005 Alabama Governor’s Arts Award and his paintings are on display in the permanent collections of the Fayette Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Rooster, 1986, by Jimmy Lee Sudduth. (Courtesy of Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Encyclopedia of Alabama)

Untitled (Two-Story Log Cabin), ca. 1988, by Jimmy Lee Sudduth. (Courtesy of Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Encyclopedia of Alabama)

Figures Walking, 1985, by Jimmy Lee Sudduth. (Courtesy of Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Encyclopedia of Alabama)

Artwork by Jimmy Lee Sudduth. (Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Wikimedia, http://americanart.si.edu/collections/rights/index.cfm)

John the Baptist, 1986, by Jimmy Lee Sudduth. (Courtesy of Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Encyclopedia of Alabama)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.