(upbeat orchestral music) (soft piano music) - Success used to be to me being recognized as a good painter, and of having shows and selling out a complete show, just really a recognition of ability, and now, success to me is, she gets a fine canvas.

I don't care whether anybody sees it or not.

I mean, success to me is this.

I have accomplished exactly what I wanna do, because when you're having shows and things, you don't always accomplish what you set out to do.

You maybe paint a good picture, but maybe it doesn't quite hit the mark that you set for yourself.

(soft piano music) I love color, I love color everywhere.

I love dull colors, I love gray colors.

They don't have to be bright, or any special-- someone said to me, what's your favorite color?

I don't know how you could have a favorite color.

It's like having 12 children, and somebody saying, which is your favorite child?

You wouldn't know, because none of them are the same.

(soft piano music) I met Archie in Chicago, we were both in school there, and we eventually ended up in New York.

We were married after a certain length of time, and I was working in pictures out in Long Island, and Archie was working as a doorman at the theater, Balaban and Katz Theater, forgotten the name of it, the Paramount.

One day, 'cause we didn't see much of each other, 'cause he worked at night, and I slept at night, and I worked in the daytime, and he slept in the daytime, and painted in the daytime.

One morning, we had a quarrel.

Oh, we just had an awful quarrel, and he stormed off to work.

I took a paintbrush and I painted him a picture, because I didn't know how else to make up, because I wasn't gonna be there when he came back, so I painted this picture, and he liked it so much that he asked me if I would paint with him when he was painting, so that's where I got started painting, was just being with Archie and painting, and getting criticisms from him.

He didn't want me to go to a school.

He wanted me to not be bound by rules and regulations that were laid down by other people.

Sometimes, I look at a blank wall, and I feel like, ooh, should I get canvas up there, I think I, ooh, I'd like to, ooh, I wonder.

There's nothing definite.

I don't look at it and say, gee, I'll make a circle.

The circle has to grow, because if I say, gee, I'll make a circle, it never turns out any good, because then I make a circle, and I get literary.

If you're gonna paint abstractly, you can't be literary.

That's the one thing that I guard against.

If I find myself saying, well, I have an awful lot of red there, I better get a little green, (groans), I know I've lost it, I've lost it because I begin to verbalize, and it has to come from deeper than a verbalization.

It has to be something that springs forth out of you, it's a part of you.

One found symbol, in a distance so big it is blue, perched on a patient plateau.

Sound held captive by the wind, splits attention down the middle, and leads to a hollow spot.

There to find only a brown stain where the memory of a sound was plucked from me.

Yellow, blue, green and gold, suspended in space, surrounded by night, held together by small tentacles.

Small world on top of small world on top of small world.

Poems are just things that, they just happen.

I don't say, oh, I'm gonna write some poetry, and I have never thought, well, I wanna do a poem about.

I just, the poem comes, and I write it down, and then I usually forget all about it.

Full flowered with fruit, hands out to the sky, green, gracious, and giving.

Touching the earth, and reaching the sky.

I have never written a poem as an illustration of a drawing, and I've never made a drawing of a poem.

They just happen.

I suppose it's the same thought that dictates both the poem and the painting.

When I was in school in Chicago, I also went down always when a road show would come in.

They had a lot of road shows in that day and age.

I would go down and ask if they had a walk on part, or a bit piece, or a part of a maid, or something, and often got jobs playing in the shows.

There's a mob scene or something like that.

The Dunkin sisters had this show called Topsy and Eva that started in California.

They were a sister act, sorta song and dance group.

They were putting on a road show out of Chicago, so I got the job of Aunt Ophelia in it, with, I think it was, the White Sisters.

We played in that until we got to New York, when we joined the main show for a while, but then they went back on the road and I stayed in New York, and proceeded then to try to get work as an actress.

I got quite a few things.

This, of course, is a theatrical picture that I had taken.

(laughing) Then I met Archie, and that was the end of show business.

I mean, I did go on working, but I didn't have much interest in it.

(soft piano music) I love black and white.

Because black is as deep as you can go, and white is as high as you can go, and think of the thousands of shades that you have that come between black and white.

You have such a range there that it's fun, it's fun to work with.

It's powerful.

You can express joy, or sorrow, or sadness, anything you want, whereas, in color, you get very gay and fine and beautiful color, and you can't express any great pathos in that.

So black and white is, I use it a lot.

I used to use it a lot in ink drawings, 'cause I love using ink with watercolor paper, and then use the ink on it.

It's fun, it flows, it responds to what you want it to do.

The house that I live in is next door to the house I was raised in, where I played as a child and really knew as a home.

(soft piano music) My mother was a tiny little person, but she was very very strong.

She was a good organizer, and she organized one of the first mother's clubs, that turned out years later to be PTA's.

My father's very handsome and very dignified, but he was quite successful as a banker.

He had a farm, and it was sort of his recreation, and he planted, I think it was, 50,000 pine trees, and he went out practically everyday to look at 'em, and my mother claimed that he went out and patted each one on the head, and those pines shot out of the ground and grew so tall, you can't imagine how tall, and how fast they grew.

I enjoy working with clay, but I don't throw on a wheel.

I did it one time, but I don't throw on a wheel.

I enjoy making figures, bowls by molding them by hand.

I'd rather do it by hand than to do it on a wheel, and then I like to hook rugs, and make shirts for my son and grandson out of old sails, and I like to cook special things.

I like to make gumbo and I might like to make different shrimp dishes and salads.

I like to make lots of big salads.

I like to eat big bowls of it every night.

When my son and grandson are down, because I do much more cooking.

When they're not here, I don't bother.

How's the baby?

- Doing fine.

When's Lyle due back?

- Very soon.

There were three children in our family, my sister, brother, and me.

My sister married, and my brother went into the bank, and is still in the bank, and working.

We have pot plants in the three banks, the main branch and the west and the north Biloxi branch, and we have pot plants in those.

Once a week, I go around and take care of the pot plants in the three banks, and that's my contribution to the bank.

That's my work at the bank.

When I started painting from real life, I painted sunflowers, because they were so vital, and they were so marvelous to do.

The first dream picture I ever painted was sunflowers.

I dreamed, I dreamed this complete canvas, just as it was, and I jumped up and ran to the studio, and I painted it.

I painted it very fast, to not forget.

I could remember the, oh, it was yellow here, no, that wasn't...

I thought I could remember the whole thing, because I did it very quickly, and I jumped out of bed, ran to the studio.

I put on a robe, I didn't even put on shoes or anything.

That was the first picture that I ever dreamed.

Then, after that, I did dream pictures.

Then, I kept small canvases stretched up, because that first large picture was about 36 by 48, I think, and I was losing it towards the last.

I was having trouble recalling.

Then, I did these small ones, and I could jump up and really go to town, and do the whole thing before it would get away, because it's like, you have the dream, you can go, that's an amazing dream.

If you don't tell it to somebody, or write it down, the next day you think, that was a dream about... what was that dream?

And it's gone, it fades.

I keep my drawings and watercolors and things like that in drawers in the studio.

This is a very early one that I did.

These from here on are much later.

I can think, I can think in watercolor (laughing) in the house, but I can't think in watercolor in the studio.

I think the studio is too big and too open.

It doesn't lend itself to something small.

This way, you could sit at a table, and do them, and you don't need space.

Then you have all the things around you that belong to you that contributed toward making you what you are.

(soft piano music) These are some of the things that I picked up when I was traveling around.

Most of them came from Mexico.

Of all the places I've ever been, I think Mexico is my favorite.

Every time I've taken a trip and I come home, I was always say, next time, I'll go to Mexico.

Now why that is, I don't know, but Mexico, as soon as I cross the border, I've this feeling that I'm home.

And yet, none of my people ever came from Mexico, I have no Spanish ancestry, or any Mexican ancestry, but I still love Mexico.

One day, when I was working in the studio, I was working with some very big, heavy paintings.

They were, smallest was four feet by six on masonite, and that makes it pretty heavy, because you have to have a frame around that, too.

So I was so tired and so frustrated that I said, next time I'm going to do miniatures, I'm not gonna do any more of these great big paintings, and so I came home, and I got out my acrylics, and my watercolors, and my ink, and I started doing miniatures, which were a lot of fun, but also awfully hard, 'cause I had a lot of misses before I got any hits.

Here are a few of them.

They're all different sizes, shapes, and forms.

In fact, I don't even have any names for them.

(soft piano music) My son is married to a doctor in New York, but he loves his home, and he loves Biloxi, so he comes down periodically.

This time, he's coming down to spend the month.

I love to travel.

One time, I was getting ready to go on a freighter trip around the world, and this friend of mine asked me if I would take her daughter, so I said yes, I'd take her.

If we had the understanding that if we didn't get along, I could fly her home, and didn't have to put up with her, but turned out, she was a terrific traveling companion.

She could go as long as I could, and we had the same taste, and she was a marvelous child.

We got on this freighter in New York, and then we went all the way around the world.

It took us five and a half months.

While on the freighter, I took my sketchbook, and my felt tip pens, and I made drawings, but I had also gotten a new camera that my son had picked out for me.

I had quite a few rolls of film.

We took some pictures.

The pictures turned out, the crew couldn't understand what I was doing, because I took pictures of such funny things, and the pictures turned out to be as abstract as my paintings, which, of course, they couldn't understand anyway.

(crickets chirping) (soft piano music) We were in Florence, and I think Florence has more pictures per square yard than any place I've ever.

I never saw so many pictures in my life, and most of 'em were poorly lit, and I thought, you know what's wrong?

If you would tilt those forward, you wouldn't get that glare off of the cameras, and you could see them better.

So when I got home, I decided that I would take my canvas and make it onto a frame that was wider at the top, narrow at the bottom, so it would tilt forward.

That was very good.

Then I got off into this making different shapes.

I just started making shapes.

They just grew.

When we moved down from New York to Biloxi, we moved into a little four room house right near the school, and in the back, there was a shed, or a tiny little house, round which we planted banana plants and things, and we called that Lyle's Clubhouse.

Why, I don't think it's so bad.

- Here.

(Dusti laughing) - We used to play a game of, seeing things for the first time, which, in the morning we'd say, today we'll see everything completely fresh.

No dictates of what it is for, or what it does, or anything.

This is something freshly approaching.

You could see something, and you would see it for its design and its color, you wouldn't see it as a crushed top to a beer can.

Everything takes on the look that it has then.

Nothing is dictated.

Its history doesn't dictate anything to it.

You see it completely fresh.

(soft piano music) One time, I had a portfolio of old drawings that were on the top shelf of a closet in my studio, and my grandson came out, and he was looking around, and he pulled it out, and the termites had come from the ground and had gone up into this thing, and had eaten these drawings, eaten great holes in all sorts of places.

I took them down, and they were such beautiful shapes, that I took them and composed them into pictures.

They're my pictures, but termites helped an awful lot.

I didn't paint steadily until, well, I started just before Archie died.

I would look out at the studio, and he'd be sitting there, and I knew he was worried, so I would go out and chat, and try to keep him from being worried, why I thought that was important, I don't know, but I did, so then I started painting in the studio with him.

He liked it.

He liked my being out there.

He helped me a great deal.

That's when I really started to painting, was when he was ill. Then, after he died, of course, I went right on.

There's a trail called the Tuxachanie Trail, and it goes beside the Tuxachanie River, which is a tiny little river, with very deep and very fast, and has wonderful sand beaches on it.

It's beautiful, just a beautiful little river.

(soft piano music) (muffled conversing) Look down there at the fungus, see, on that fallen tree that sweeps out, next to the magnolia.

Ain't that pretty?

Looks like somebody painted it.

A friend of mine, Tom Murphy, in fact, he's a photographer.

He and his wife are both photographers, and Tom Murphy loves to go to the woods, too, so we would often drive up there and take this trail.

We liked the southern end of it better than the northern end of the trail.

It's quite long.

Do you think that's the female, Tom?

(soft piano music) (muffled conversing) Yes, the little black one.

We kinda tore up his nest really.

It's a beautiful color, though.

I like Masonite because you can kinda gouge into it, and sand it, and scrape it, and scratch it, and draw on it, and you can really abuse it, and sometimes, it turns out very beautiful.

This is A Portrait of B.

My first one man show was with Betty Parsons.

Of course, I felt like that was the finest gallery to be in.

She gave me a show every second year then, for a long time, until finally, I kind of didn't go back to New York as often.

I was more intrigued with painting than with showing.

I think my last show was of the fiberglass paintings for windows.

(scraping) (upbeat piano music)