From the collection of:
The Kentucky Library and Museum || VAM Home

Bottom Road depicts early rural Kentucky life when roads ran next to creek beds. Here, a couple drives an open horse-drawn wagon. Two children ride on the back of the wagon, dangling their feet and watching the road pass beneath them. Artist Helen La France Orr recalls frequently traveling Bottom Road to work in the fields as a child. In this painting, she has created a sense of depth by using contrast to distinguish light and shadow and color to depict atmospheric perspective. While La France Orr often paints on the smooth side of common commercial paneling, this particular work is painted on the rough textured side of a Masonite board.

About the Artist

Folk artist Helen La France (also seen as LaFrance) Orr was born in 1919 in Graves County, Kentucky. She started painting at the age of 5, inspired by her mother. “She placed a pencil in my hand and instructed me to paint what I saw,” Orr once remembered. “Then she would gently guide my hand across the paper.”

Young Helen’s first work was a large gray rabbit, which she painted on the back of a leftover piece of wallpaper, using watercolors given to her by an aunt. Her mother kept her supplied with paints by blending laundry bluing with dandelions and berries. The budding artist also created dolls for her younger sister using roots and branches.

Memories of rural Western Kentucky life are a favorite subject for La France Orr. Her paintings depict scenes from a bygone era—farmers plowing in the field, church picnics, cotton fields, river baptisms. They have been exhibited in galleries in Richmond, Kentucky; Columbus, Georgia; and St. Louis. And a biography of the artist is included in Outsider Art of the South, an art reference book by Kathy Moses.

La France Orr was enshrined in the Gallery of Great Black Kentuckians, an educational poster and bookmark series produced by the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, in 2004. For information about ordering the poster and bookmarks, visit the gallery web site [www.state.ky.us/agencies2/kchr/ggbk.htm].

Note: Helen La France Orr talks about how she paints her memories in the video segment “Painting: Helen La France,” found in Part 5: Folk/Traditional Arts of the Spectrum of Art DVD in the Visual Arts Toolkit.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: Does this scene look like anywhere you’ve seen or visited in Kentucky? What time period do you think the artist is portraying in this work? Compare this painting to Neighborhood Watch—Old Style by Joan Dance in the Kentucky Folk Art Center gallery of the Kentucky Virtual Art Museum. Both paintings were created by women from Western Kentucky. Compare the lifestyles portrayed.

Activity: Choose one of the familiar scenes from your life—something you see on the way to school, a favorite vacation spot, or a place you like to go—and create a painting of it.

Links

See samples of La France Orr’s paintings at Galerie Bonheur.
[www.galeriebonheur.com/memory/helenlafrance/lafrance.htm]

Read a biography of Helen La France Orr at the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights web site.
[www.state.ky.us/agencies2/kchr/HelenLaFrance.htm]