The Kentucky Historical Society

Images are for educational purposes only and should not be reproduced.
The Kentucky Historical Society
Other works by Helen La France Orr:

The Kentucky Library & Museum

The Kentucky Library & Museum

The Kentucky Library & Museum

The Kentucky Library & Museum

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

Helen La France Orr (Kentucky, b. 1919)

UNTITLED (TOBACCO PLANTING), 1986

Oil on board; 22-3/4" X 11"

1987.12.3

Kentucky Library and Museum, Western Kentucky University

This painting depicts tobacco-planting time on a Western Kentucky farm. While the painting portrays a rather lovely outdoor scene, the viewer can imagine the intensity of such physical effort, with little or no relief from the blaring sunlight available to the workers. The diminutive size of the figures, the buildings, and the trees suggests the breadth of this expansive landscape.

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: Can you tell what the farmers in this picture are planting? What time of year do you think it is? Do you think this painting depicts a contemporary farm scene, or is it alluding to a time in the past? What makes you think so? What do you know about planting tobacco or other farm crops? What type of work is involved? Has farming changed since Helen La France Orr was a child? How?

Activity: Choose a memory from your life and create a painting about 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]