Rosemary Marr (left) with her mother, Mayfair “Mary” Matthews
Rosemary Marr holds her mom’s spiral notebook in her hands. The cover is creased and the pages have been ruffled through so many times they ripple under her careful touch. On the back of the front cover is a drawing of a young girl, a doll in her hand. “That’s my mom,” Marr says. The title page, reads, “I Remember Mayfair.”
Mayfair “Mary” Matthews was born in 1938 in Senatobia, Mississippi. Raised by a single mother, she attended school through the third grade but then began working in the cotton fields and would do that until her late twenties. Without a formal education, Matthews learned to read from books and magazines her mother would buy from the five-and-dime store in town. One of those magazines advertised a competition for a scholarship to an arts school. “Once she filled out the application and drew whatever for the scholarship, they wrote her back and said she won,” Marr says. “It really meant nothing to her, given the circumstances she was in. That just wasn’t her mindset.”
courtesy rosemary marr
The Red Truck by Mayfair “Mary” Matthews
Marr didn’t learn about this scholarship until she read her mother’s handwritten memoir years after her passing in 2011. She didn’t even know about her mother’s artistic inclinations until Matthews was in her 50s.
“She was about 53 when she started painting in late 1991,” Marr says. “After my brother was murdered.” Jerry was her only son out of four children. He was struck by a car and killed. The family suspected it was intentional, the result of a fatal attraction, but Marr says the police didn’t look further into it, believing it to be a hit-and-run and giving the family no closure.
For Matthews, who had already survived so much — from sharecropping to escaping an abusive relationship and moving her family to Memphis — Jerry’s death was an incomprehensible tragedy. So she took a pen to a sheet of notebook paper and sketched the image that kept flashing in her mind — a young man sprawled on the street, his sneakers thrown off and police officers kneeling over him. The image was simultaneously striking and heart-breaking.
courtesy rosemary marr
Evening Stroll by Mayfair “Mary” Matthews
“I can’t say she felt better after that,” Marr says, “but at least she was processing it.” This was the first time Marr had ever seen a drawing by her mother. Marr herself, though, had been drawing since she was young. “I was the child that liked to escape and draw, and she knew that was what I enjoyed. She always made provisions for it, and she’d always buy me typing paper. I didn’t have a clue that my mother had any art ability or aspiration. It’s like having Billie Holiday as your mom, and at 53 she starts blowing out all these tunes and you’ve never heard her sing before.”
At the time, Marr was attending Memphis College of Art, so she shared her materials with her mother and brought her to art shows and galleries. “I thought it was just as natural as breathing,” Marr says. “She would even explain it as something she had no control over. It was something she just had to do. And I do know that it helped her tremendously with her grief because when she did create art, that was all she thought about.”
For the next 30 years, Matthews’ appetite to create was voracious. Her passion pushed her through the suicide of her partner of 40 years and the untimely death of her oldest daughter. She painted, sculpted, and quilted from sun-up to sundown.
“She was always looking for new materials and challenging herself because she was on this creative journey,” Marr says. “And I know personally as an artist — what I like about it — art is a problem-solving process, especially if you’re going into a new medium, and I think she enjoyed solving those problems.”
courtesy rosemary marr
The Folks Back Home by Mayfair “Mary” Matthews
Marr describes her mother as stoic and reserved, who kept a lot about her life close to her heart. “So to see the vibrant colors and the whimsical nature of some of her paintings,” Marr says, “she was definitely outpouring some of the joy that she felt in the inside.”
Matthews’ work appeared in a few shows in her lifetime, including a solo exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum. “My mom did no-nonsense, but she would laugh and joke right along with anybody. If you were at one of her shows, she would hook you up by the arm and go painting to painting and just laugh with you,” Marr says. “And it wasn’t her telling you why she did it, it was you telling her what was so funny in that painting. I think she drew from that energy. She would put it out there to amuse people.”
When Matthews passed, after a long bout with depression. Marr had been living in Oakland, California, a single mother and teacher. “I actually used some of her images to teach the principles of art,” she says. “I’ve taught color, but it was something I had to learn. My mother knew it instinctively. And the composition, [it was] just natural composition.”
image courtesy rosemary marr
Rosemary Marr’s portrait of her mother, Let Her Eat Cake
As concern for the pandemic grew in March 2020, Marr decided to retire, move back home to Memphis, and accomplish her goal of promoting her mom’s work. While she was packing, she found that handwritten memoir, tucked away in old boxes, and she says, “It came at the perfect time.”
“It was very emotional for me to read. I didn’t know what my mother lived through until I read this. I didn’t know people could be that poor. And it’s really, to me, an amazement that she had the level of resiliency she did to keep it together and take care of her children.
“When I read her memoir, it put the paintings in context,” she continues. “Even though our styles are different, I always try to find a common denominator between my and my mother’s art. I think just spiritually as far as image goes, we kind of go back in time.”
While Marr draws in black and white with a tendency for realism, referencing old photos of African Americans from decades past, Matthews painted from memories — memories of a yellow Cadillac an old boyfriend once drove, her pregnancy as a 17-year-old, her job as a “domestic,” juke joints and dances and segregated bathrooms, community and hardship — memories Marr had no idea about until after discovering the memoir.
“When I do my own art, I really channel her. Just like I didn’t really know about her art abilities and her interest in art until she started, she has no idea of who I am as an artist today,” Marr says. “I am just starting to enjoy making art. I’ve never considered myself an artist. I’ve always considered myself as someone who had drawing skills. Being an artist is also being passionate, and I never had the passion until now.”
Now, in this post-retirement stage of her life, Marr draws with the same fervor with which her mother once painted. As for her first show, Marr plans to do a mother-daughter exhibition, so that their art can be celebrated together. For the time being, their works hang side by side in Marr’s home.
