LJ woman still produces creative artwork

Tag : Fabric Embroidery

Published August 18, 2008 LAKE JACKSON  Like her famous predecessor, Grandma Moses, whoabandoned embroidery and took up the paintbrush at age 76, LeonaBesson began painting at age 73 after a lifetime of sewing,embroidery and sculpting in fabric.

Besson was born on a farm in the Czech community of Wallis in thespring of 1924. While her parents hand-tended their 40-acre cottonfarm, Leona, as the eldest of three children, had becomeresponsible for the household duties by age 10, cooking, mendingand looking after her younger siblings.

She learned to sew and helped her mother make clothes for thefamily and textile furnishings for the household.

She continued to perfect her skills in the fiber arts and, inaddition to clothing four generations of her family, she masteredthe craft of upholstery, created embroidered tapestries andthree-dimensional fabric sculptures and dolls.

After she lost her husband and sweetheart  a sailor she had met inGalveston during World War II  after almost 50 years of marriage,she took up the paintbrush and began painting her visions of apastoral lifestyle. Discovering a freedom in the fluidity of thepaint that had been lacking in the structured craft of sewing, shedeveloped an abstract style that expressed her emotions.

A prolific painter before Parkinsons disease slowed her down inher 80s, she could create three or four paintings in a single day.Her work has been exhibited regionally within Texas. Her paintingswere displayed in an invitational two-man show with her son, TomBesson, also an artist, in June 1999, at Alvin Community College.

She exhibited in an invitational solo show at Alternate Current ArtGallery in Austin in May 2005, where she showed 75 of herpaintings. Her paintings are in the collections of artists and artcollectors throughout the state.

While she now resides in Plantation Health Care in Lake Jackson,she hasnt stopped producing her works of art. She has a sewingmachine in her bedroom at the nursing facility, and uses a cornerof the activities room down the hall for her art studio where shecontinues to paint on a weekly basis.
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