Jackson Purchase Historical Society

The Jackson Purchase Historical Society (JPHS) and the Paducah Historic Preservation Group are partnering to offer a special tour of the Paducah Historic Preservation Group’s (PHPG) Helen LaFrance Collection.

The PHPG recently acquired a significant number of LaFrance’s paintings as part of its effort to preserve African American history and culture in the Jackson Purchase. JPHS wants its members and others who support its mission, as well as the many historical organizations in western Kentucky, to have an opportunity to view this impressive collection. PHPG wants to share this treasure with the region. The collection is currently housed at the Paducah School of Art and Design, 905 Harrison Street, Paducah KY 42001. A special public tour has been arranged for Monday, September 16 between 10:00 am and Noon. A donation of $10 is suggested to help defray the costs of properly caring for the collection, which is a major cultural resource for the Jackson Purchase region and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. In addition to the tour the Café staffed by culinary arts students will be open until 2:00 that day. Pre-registration is required as places are limited.

Helen LaFrance was born in Graves County in 1919 and lived to be 101 years old. She is often described as “an outsider artist” due to her lack of formal training and a career spent far from the cultural mainstream – living in rural west Kentucky all her life. He has also been described as a memory painter, best known for recording and celebrating the disappearing folkways and traditions of the rural South. Her work has been compared to  a number of other artists with similar backgrounds and approaches, particularly Grandma Moses (1860–1961). In fact, she is sometimes referred to as “the Black Grandma Moses.” Somewhat less well known outside her home area, she also painted powerful and intensely spiritual visionary interpretations of the Bible, in a style that differed radically from her memory paintings. She carved animal figures, made articulated dolls, and quilted. Her artistic bent was encouraged from childhood by her parents, and she was encouraged to paint what she saw. When her mother died, she left home to take various jobs in a hospital, caring for children, cooking, working in the tobacco barns and a ceramic factory where she decorated brand-name whiskey bottles. In her 40s, she made enough money to buy art supplies at the grocery store and in 1986, at age 67, she began painting full-time.

While she lived out her life in Graves County her work received national and international attention. LaFrance’s work is represented in many notable public and private collections in this country and in Europe, including those of Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King, and Bryant Gumbel. Her work has been shown at Murray State University, the Kentucky Museum of Western Kentucky University, the National Black Fine Arts Show in New York City, and Color, an art show sponsored by Oprah Winfrey in Chicago. Her depiction of workers rolling cut tobacco is included in the Van Nelle collection of tobacco art in Amsterdam, the Netherlands., The Owensboro Museum of Fine Art holds examples of her work in its collection and featured her in a cataloged show in 1991 called “Kentucky Spirit, the Naive Tradition.” The Saint Louis Art Museum and The Speed Art Museum also include her work in their permanent collections. The Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead also owns her work and has included her in several of its exhibitions. She received the prestigious Folk Heritage Award for 2011  and one of the Governor’s Awards in the Arts presented by the Kentucky Arts Council. A selection of her religious paintings was included in “Helen LaFrance: Kentucky Woman,” an exhibition that ran from August 26, 2022, through April 30, 2023, at Louisville’s Speed Art Museum. She is featured in two books by Kathy Moses: Helen LaFrance: Folk Art Memories and the reference book Outsider Art of the South. Her life and her work are documented in the award-winning screenplay by Marilyn Jaye Lewis, Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story and the 2019 award-winning KET documentary “Helen LaFrance: Memories.”