Bill Sawyer (American/Tennessee, 1936-1920) oil on board painting titled "Flower Growing from a Tire". The painting depicts a young African American toddler sitting on the top step of a narrow red brick house with partially boarded window. In the foreground, a small group of flowers bloom in soil set into a planter fashioned from a tire. Signed "Bill Sawyer" lower right. Titled with a faintly visible inscription reading "from Bill Sawyer" en verso. Float mounted in a carved wooden frame with traces of gilt, an off white linen liner, and a white wooden fillet. Board: 16" H x 20" W. Framed: 22 3/4" H x 26 1/2" W. Biography: Bill Sawyer was a self-taught artist from Nashville. He is said to have taken up painting while stationed in France in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s. His first exhibition was in Nashville in May of 1959 and he went on to have one-man shows at Daniel Orr's Gallery in San Diego, the Little Gallery in Memphis, TN, and the Parthenon in Nashville. Joseph Patterson, then the president of the American Association of Museums, arranged for a show of Sawyer's work at the Durlacher Brothers Gallery in New York in 1964. Sawyer was the first untrained artist to have a one-man show at the gallery, and his second show there, in 1966, sold out. Shortly after this time, Sawyer traveled overseas. After his trip, for unknown reasons, Sawyer seems to have never painted again. He sought privacy, living quietly in Nashville, where he passed away in 2020. After 1966, his work went on to be exhibited at the Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, and in the Art of Tennessee exhibit at the Frist Museum (2006).

PROVENANCE: Private Nashville, TN Collection.

CONDITION: Overall very good condition with some scuffing and paint loss to the margin edges of the board. 2" x 1/2" area of surface scuffs to top left corner.