VAM galleries including this work:
The Kentucky Library and Museum | Everyday Life || VAM Home

This painting depicts a man feeding a group of rotund pigs, who gather around the trough to enjoy their meal.

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: What kind of mood does this painting evoke? Who is the main focus of the painting—the farmer or the pigs? What makes you think so? Are the proportions lifelike? If not, why might an artist want to draw things out of proportion?

Activity: Draw two pictures: one in which the objects are proportional to such objects in real life and one in which the objects are not proportional to real life. How do the pictures compare? What kind of effect does each picture have?

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]