Tale of Two Seekers

I was overcome with a strange sense of déjà vu this summer. Our exhibition of paintings by Eunice, Louisiana native and mid-century New York abstract expressionist, Cora Kelly Ward (1920-1989) brought back memories of another artist and poet involved in a life-long process of discovery.

In 1989, I moved to Ocean Springs, Mississippi to assume a new position as the first Director of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art. Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965) was an American Van Gogh, a gifted visionary and troubled soul who saw more in the natural world in one day than most of us do in an entire lifetime. During my first week on the job, I went to visit with W.I. Anderson's dear wife Sissy and his enchanting daughter, Mary. The Anderson family had agreed to give the new museum a number of objects from the family's collection. They would also lend a number of works on a long-term basis with the intent of giving them over time.

Ms. Sissy was sitting on the front porch of her home when I arrived. Mary came through the screen door with graciously open arms and bearing a warm smile. After a rather lengthy chat on the porch, Mother and Daughter escorted me across the crushed oyster shell roadway to a small cottage nestled in a grove of magnolia and old slash pine. I had read about this house in Sissy's book "Approaching the Magic Hour." Walter Anderson lived the final years of his life as a recluse, living under the shelter of his trusty rowboat on Horn Island, or in this modest three-room cottage. Nothing had been touched. Anderson's rowboat remained stowed under the pier and beam porch.

Mary Anderson removed the padlock, which secured the front door, and we entered what I would describe as the surreal haunt of a hermit genius. Carved chests, ceramics, lyrical furniture supported by animal and bird figures, and shelves loaded with books and drawings, filled the main room.

Mary opened a wooden chest with Elephants carved in relief on the top and sides. She began removing notebooks and drawings rendered on common typewriter paper. I recognized the voluminous echoes of an artist's process, a mania that great painters, musicians and writers suffer through in loneliness. These were the remains of the act of "working out" an idea, repeating a notion or a concept over and over again until the "realization" comes. For Anderson, “realization” was a product of process. The process might require standing chin deep in a pond for hours on end observing the patterns created by diving bell spiders on the water's surface. It could also be re-reading classic poems, holding the book in one hand, and pen and paper in the other, all the while illustrating your impressions with a subconscious hand. Anderson did not believe in accidents. He identified with specific incidents, those happenstance moments when accident and intent rhyme. Nature, he wrote, was “only too glad to have assistance in establishing order.” The artist's role was to be attentive and empathic, a patient observer, prepared for the moment when true meaning is discovered.

W.I. Anderson Journal Entries found in Cottage

W.I. Anderson Watercolor on typewriter paper

In 2007, I received a telephone call from a Professor of Sociology at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. Maurice Badon told me his late sister had been an artist in New York. He was left with her remaining works and was looking for "a home" for the collection. I asked him to send more information and images. I came to discover that she worked within a circle of friends including renowned art critic and historian Clement Greenberg. Enclosed in the material Badon provided was a small catalog published in 1989 for Ms. Ward's memorial exhibition in Manhattan. In the introduction Greenberg wrote, “Ward is an exemplary case of the artist who wins out by persistence...Subconsciously, she was waiting for her vision. It came in her last decade."


There was indeed cause for further investigation into the artist and her work, but I was in the process of hiring a new Curator of Exhibitions and had little time to make a site visit to view the collection. After Dr. Lee Gray joined the Hilliard staff in 2008, we finally made the journey to Hammond, Louisiana to visit a climate controlled storage unit located near I-10. Dr. Badon opened the rolling metal door revealing wall-to-wall rolls of canvas, boxes of drawings and framed paintings.

Some of the rolled canvases from the Ward estate. Most were labeled with gallery names and exhibition dates.

A figure drawing by an unknown artist found in the Ward estate.

The first object I pulled from the stack was a charcoal drawing of a female nude. In the bottom right hand corner was an inscription in red crayon "For Cora from Clem."

The nature of this investigation suddenly became very interesting. It was obvious that Ward and Greenberg had a deep friendship. I informed Dr. Badon that we would be interested in cataloging and surveying the entire content of the storage room. He explained that he and the rest of the family were not interested in the collection and they would donate the artwork and contents unconditionally. Through the skilled efforts of the Museum volunteers under the direction of Museum Registrar Joyce Penn, the museum completed a survey of over 1,100 objects included in the collection.

A painting cart loaded with framed canvases by Ward.

A museum volunteer sewing an identification tag on a Ward canvas.

Eventually, the Hilliard accessioned in perpetuity a select number of paintings and drawing for the permanent collection. We also distributed a number of paintings to sister museums in Texas, Mississippi and Alabama, and the balance was shared at public sale last spring with the proceeds going to the collections preservation fund at the UL Lafayette Foundation. The outcome of this nearly four year effort is the current exhibition, Cora Kelley Ward: A Work in Progress.

This exhibition reveals a unique spirit, one that Walter Inglis Anderson would recognize. Both artists worked in different genres and lived in opposing environments. One was influenced by nature, philosophy and classical literature, the other was influenced by Modernist ideals and criticism. Both Anderson and Ward were creative souls possessed with passion for process. They were both seekers of the "realization."  Ward's obsession with Twombly-esque doodles on paper or the Color Field painters meditative color bleeding on un-primed canvas is evident in the hundreds of repetitive drawings, paintings and studies discovered in her Manhattan studio. Our Curator has recreated the semblance of Ward's studio in the museum beside a display of the works lauded by Greenberg.

Cora Kelley Ward ink on Paper, 1960

Cora Kelley Ward, watercolor on paper, 1954

Surely spending some contemplative time in the Hilliard Museum with her work will bring one closer to an understanding of what it truly means to be a passionate and intuitive seeker of a personal realization.