Sybil Gibson.
(1908-1995, Alabama and Florida)
Still Life of Poinsettias.
1977.
Signed and dated bottom right.
Mixed media on recycled brown paper bag.
Image is 18.75"w x 24.75"h.
Archival frame is 24"w x 30"h.
Excellent condition with vibrant colors.
Provenance: Collection of Gordon Bryars, S.F., CA.
The Mike Dale Collection.
Est. $600-$800.
Ship: $75

Sybil Aaron Gibson was born on February 18, 1908 in Dora, Alabama, to parents Lenora Reid Aaron and Monroe Aaron. Her father was a wealthy banker, merchant, farmer, and coal mine operator. After graduation, Gibson married her high school sweetheart Hugh Gibson in 1929, with whom she had a daughter. The marriage ended in divorce after six years and Gibson left her daughter with her parents and returned to school, enrolling at Jacksonville State Teachers College in Jacksonville, Alabama, where she earned a bachelor of science degree and began teaching in her hometown of Dora, Alabama. In the late 1940s, Gibson moved to Florida due to a sinus condition, teaching at Fort Myers, Palm Beach, and finally settling in Miami. Around 1950, Gibson married David de Yarmon, whom she described as "the Frenchman," and they were together until his death in 1958.

A college art teacher told Gibson she had no talent for painting, and as a result she did not begin painting until much later in life. On Thanksgiving Day in 1963, at the age of 55, Gibson decided to make her own Christmas wrapping paper from brown paper bags, which she soaked to remove the glue and then flattened to create her favorite surface on which to apply tempera paint. Pleased with the results, Gibson developed a fascination (some would say an obsession) with creating art that would remain with her for the rest of her life.

Throughout the 1960s, works by Gibson would appear in small galleries in Miami. Her paintings typically depict portraits of women, girls, and children, (occasionally men and boys) as well as flowers, birds, and cats. Her paintings are light, ethereal, other-worldly, fragile, delicate. She became known as the "Bag Lady," because many of her paintings were done on recycled paper bags (like the one offered here). In the years that followed, Gibson became so wrapped up in her painting that she neglected her health, her relationships with family and friends, and her finances: by the late 1960s she was essentially broke and had lost contact with her family.

As Gibson's personal life crumbled, her artistic life flourished. Her big break came in 1968, when she was given a one-woman show at the Miami Museum of Modern Art, to which she contributed an autobiography for the catalog. In 1971, the museum arranged a second show of her paintings. Shortly before the opening of the show, Gibson disappeared, leaving drawings scattered all over her yard (she had been evicted from her apartment). She was later discovered living in a trailer in Gainesville, Florida, but she also disappeared from there. During the 1970s and part of the 1980s, Gibson moved back and forth between Alabama and Florida.

Gibson's work is in numerous private and museum collections today, including: The Museum of Modern Art, Birmingham, AL; The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, AL; The Miami Museum of Modern Art, FL; The New Orleans Museum of Art, LA; The Brooklyn Museum, NY; The New York State Historical Society, NY, NY; and the American Folk Art Museum, NY, NY. In her later years, Gibson was reunited with her adult daughter who had been raised by her parents. Her daughter arranged for Gibson to have cataract surgery to partially restore her vision, and facilitated her move to Florida, where Gibson died in a nursing home in 1995 at age 86.