Frances Hairston is seldom happier than when she is exploring the rural fields, wildflowers and streams of the prairie. The Crawford resident interprets her discoveries with watercolors in an exhibit titled “Prairie Images: The Way I See It.” The show is featured for the month of September at the Columbus Arts Council’s Rosenzweig Arts Center at 501 Main St., Columbus.
The community is invited to an opening reception Thursday, Sept. 3 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., during the Columbus Art Walk.
“Any time I can be outdoors, I am,” Hairston said at her home on a quiet Lowndes County road bordered by farmland. She lives surrounded by paintings. Their bucolic scenes are lifted from prairie landscapes. The subject matter is deceptively simple — leaves reflected on a pond’s surface, freshly-baled hay, vibrant trumpet flowers, grazing cattle, stems of Johnson grass. “I try to take what some people think is the mundane and hope to shine a light on its beauty,” remarked the artist who came to painting later in life. The Belzoni native’s journey to the prairie began when she enrolled in what is now Mississippi University for Women more than five decades ago. She finished with a degree in history, a minor in English, and a beau — a roommate’s brother, Lamar Hairston. They married in 1962.
Throughout the years, Frances would come across images or scenery she wished she could capture on canvas or paper.
“It always bothered me that I couldn’t draw … but I could visualize,” she shared. So in 2005, when she had the opportunity to enroll again at The W, she took it. In her mid-60s, Hairston was a nontraditional student.
“I was scared to death,” she laughed. “I felt like I was behind. I’d stay up all night studying all these artists. … I was determined to get that degree.” She reminds others that “people can do things they at first don’t think they can.”
In school again, Hairston learned about perspective, figure drawing, acrylics, oil painting and more. And she discovered watercolors. With pigments that let light shine through to the paper and reflect back, the unique medium produces a transparent quality that can seem to glow.
After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, she took advantage of other opportunities to grow, including Columbus Arts Council workshops offered with watercolorist Hillary Parker.
Preparing for her one-woman show has been the catalyst for at least a year of intense painting. The 24 watercolors she will exhibit each have a story, which she has summarized, to be mounted with each piece.
“It’s all been exciting and challenging,” said Hairston. “In processing through these paintings, it’s given me discipline and growth. Because all these paintings are about things I love and see every day, they have become a part of me.”
“Prairie Images: The Way I See It” will be on exhibit through September 26. For more information, contact the Columbus Arts Council, 662-328-2787, or visit columbus-arts.com.
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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