Jim Sudduth
(1910-2007) Fayette, AL
Jimmie Lee Sudduth started making art using mud and other natural pigments when he was a child; he claimed to know of at least 20 shades of clay around his homeground in northwest Alabama. He discovered early on that by adding a sugar-based substance to the mud such as molasses or Coca-Cola, that the mud would stay fixed to the surface it was applied to. Though some very early paintings were executed with all paint, most examples from ca. 1970 to 1993 employ varying amounts of the more unorthodox materials such as berry juice, shoe polish, ash, turnip green leaves (rubbed on the surface to create a distinctive green hue), and the aforementioned “sweet mud.” As the years progressed, by the mid-1990s, Sudduth used mostly acrylic paint in his work, applying it with a foam brush and using usually a single shade of mud for texture and accents. He was one of my favorite artists to visit.
