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Interview with Mildred Dixon Sherwood, conducted by Sarah C. Reynolds.

Learning how

I actually started studying at the Museum when I was a child, and then when I was grown up and I became serious I studied also at the Museum after I studied at Newcomb [Art School].

The Newcomb Art School of Sophje Newcomb College, the women’s college affiliated with Tulane University in New Orleans.
I studied with Frances Skinner and Robert Preusser,
Robert O. Preusser was an instructor at the museum school from 1946 to 1950. He was also Associate Curator of Education at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from 1951 to 1953.
and I used to go to Tasco, Mexico, and study at a little art school in the summer with Carlos Merida. And the more I painted, the more serious I became. Ruth Uhler was an inspiration and encouraged me a lot. I had a two-person show with Kelly Fearing
Texas Artists, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Lee Malone, Director. February 6-27, 1955.
and I continued painting. I have a lot of memories of the people painting at that time: Henri Gadbois, Leila [McConnell], Robert Preusser, and oh—I can’t remember them all! Lowell Collins…a lot of activity going on. And another fond memory of mine was Jimmy Ernst—Max Ernst’s son—gave a course at the Museum and he was a marvelous teacher. I learned a lot from him. I think Miss Uhler got him because he just gave a six-week course.

I continued painting and then my husband and I spent a year in Europe. We spent half the time in Greece and I painted a lot of pictures of Greece…then we spent the next six months in London and I had a show in London of the paintings I did in Greece. I was mainly influenced by not the light so much, but the sun. I was always amused that they’d say so much in England about the light in Greece—and I think it’s because it’s so cloudy in England. So I was never impressed with the light because the light to me was not a lot different from Houston. The sun was what affected me most. I painted quite a few pictures with the sun in them, but I sold most of them in my [London] show. And then when I came home I had a show at Meredith Long’s.

House on west gray

By Mildred Dixon Sherwood. Courtesy of the artist.

Taking it seriously

We lived in London in the 60s and I did a lot of drawings, but I’ve never shown [them]. They’re sort of fantasy drawings. I always thought in a way, I wish I had been painting later because there’s more interest in art now than there was then. There was just Bute Gallery and the Cushmans had a gallery, and it wasn’t taken as seriously. Often I think back and feel like I wasn’t taken as seriously as an artist because of the times as I would have been later. It was sort of like it was [thought of as]a hobby—it wasn’t a hobby to me, but to people I knew, friends, they considered it, “Isn’t it nice, you paint.”

I had quite a bit of success. I won a lot of prizes and I sold paintings, but still it was just like, “Oh, how nice you can do that.” Looking back I rather resent that. Of course, this was before the de Menils came and the Contemporary Arts Museum hadn’t been started. I remember when it (CAM) was started and that was nice and helped a lot. They had sort of like a lending library. You’d put your paintings in it and people could rent them by the month or week, or whatever.

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Source:  OpenStax, Houston reflections: art in the city, 1950s, 60s and 70s. OpenStax CNX. May 06, 2008 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10526/1.2
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