Darlene Jellerson Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1927 - d. 2002

Darline Jellerson was a naif painter whose works were deeply rooted in the American folk art tradition. Although her technique appeared simple, folksy and homespun, she was actually a well-trained painter whose works were visually sophisticated. Jellerson's subjects ranged from familiar scenes of the rural American landscape and people she knew growing up to medieval princesses and Biblical scenes, all decoratively rendered with careful brushwork and a rich, varied palette. The artist had a sly sense of humor and this whimsical quality is one of the things that set her work apart from other painters who favored a primitive or naive style. Jellerson was an attractive woman with a restless spirit who traveled extensively, venturing to the south Pacific, North Africa and Europe in search of artistic inspiration and to satiate her curiosity about other cultures and ancient history.

Jellerson was born in Billings, Montana, in the Yellowstone Valley, on September 17, 1927. She grew up in Montana and in the northwest metropolis of Seattle, Washington. Jellerson attended the University of Washington, on the banks of Lake Washington, where she majored in Fine Arts. In 1951 her artistic talent won her a scholarship to the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. She moved to San Antonio, Texas in 1960, where she began exhibiting her naif works in earnest. In 1961 she was part of an exhibition of young painters from Texas at the Highgate Gallery in New York City, where her works were singled out for praise in the magazine Art News: "Darline Jellerson's paintings are winning in their naive and decorative innocence." Jellerson's works won many plaudits in Texas and in other exhibitions in the Southwest, which was just beginning to assert itself artistically.

After sixteen years in Texas, Jellerson returned to Los Angeles in the late 1970s, where she began exhibiting at the Howard Morseburg Galleries on Wilshire Boulevard. She lived and worked in a series of apartments in the Mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles, not far from the Otis Art Institute she had once attended. Her second stay in Los Angeles was a productive period, and at Morseburg Galleries she received a great deal of encouragement from Gallery Director Godfrey Gaston and built a following among southern California collectors. In the 1980s she returned to Seattle, where she continued to work and exhibit her paintings. Her last move was back to San Antonio, Texas, where she passed away on March 15, 2002, at the age of 74.