Signed reprint #820/2600

Dimensions: 33"x27"

Artist: Louise Dunavant

Elise Louise Dunavant was born in Memphis March 2, 1931 and lived in a “shotgun house” she says, at 1159 Walker. “You had to go onto the back porch to get to the bathroom. My mother would heat water on the stove. We would have to take a bath in this big tub,” she says. Her room had a special attribute. “There was a stove in my room and I could lay in bed until it got warm,” she remembers.

“I used to draw a lot and color,” Dunavant remembers “I didn’t have much confidence.” She spent most of her days as an only child, but a stepbrother of hers died at birth. “That’s the only time I saw my step dad cry,” she says.

Just before her graduation in 1949 from Southside High, she got a job at Loews Sate Theater. “We’d get off work and I remember there was an usher with a guitar,” she says. Usher Elvis Presley would move on to other endeavors. Dunavant got her own moment of fame with the release of the movie “Annie Get Your Gun,” A photo shows her out front of the theater in a cowgirl outfit pointing two six shooters in the air to promote the movie. “I think I made about three dollars for that,” she says.

A look at her paintings shows a painstaking attention to detail. Signs have names whenever possible. The harder you look the more you see, they almost evoke the image from a large view camera. The paintings freeze time of places that have changed over the years. Her painting “Riverside” was from a photograph she took from the Rivermark April 26, 1986. Some of her prints celebrate Memphians from about 100 years ago enjoying places like Main Street, Court Square and Overton Park.