Mary T. Smith.
Untitled. HP.
c. 1975-1985.
HP IN in bright orange letters top right.
Signed Mary T. Smith verso.
Acrylic and housepaint on plywood.
Excellent condition.
Image is 24"w x 36"h.
Frame is 25"w x 37"h.
Provenance: William S. (Bill) Arnett.
Mark Karelson, Modern Primitive Gallery.
Ted and Ann Oliver Collection.
The Mike Dale Collection.
Est. $2,000-$4,000.
Ship: $85

Mary T. Smith was the daughter of sharecroppers, the third of thirteen children, who at an early age had a serious hearing impairment which caused her to be isolated from her peers. Despite her handicap, she completed a fifth-grade education, always finding an outlet in her drawing. Once Smith retired from working as a gardener and domestic worker in the 1970s, she began to decorate her one-acre home and garden lot in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, with highly personal and stylized paintings reminiscent of West African ceremonial masks. She painted on tin and plywood and other found materials readily and freely available from a nearby trash dump.
She used bright, contrasting colors in her paintings.

Many of her works, like the one offered here, feature figures with their arms upraised, an image associated with ecstasy or spiritual enlightenment.
Her work often incorporated cryptic text with her imagery, as is the case with this painting and the 'HP IN' in the top right corner. Speculation that the image in this painting might be John Lennon comes from the unusual round glasses of the subject which are executed in black paint. Lennon was assassinated on December 8, 1980, at the height of Smith's painting heyday, so his image would have been widely circulated at that time and available to the artist.
It is also possible that the painting depicts one of Smith's family members, a friend, or a neighbor, all popular subjects for her work. It could also depict one of her many frequent visitors whom she occasionally painted.

In 1985, Smith suffered a stroke which left her speech and writing impaired, compounding the hearing loss she had endured throughout her life. After her stroke, Smith's painting output slowed, she made less and less money, and she stopped painting altogether in 1991."She (Smith) stood her ground until 1995 when she died at the age of ninety-one. A poor, black, uneducated, hearing-impaired daughter of a sharecropper had become a major artist exhibited and collected throughout the United States and included in almost every important 'folk art' show." – William Arnett (1939-2020), Souls Grown Deep Foundation.