Date:  October 2, 2023  |   Story: Stephanie Maxwell Newton  |   Photography: Courtesy of Sheila Cotton  |  

A field of Mississippi snow rises to meet the dusky horizon in Sheila Cotton’s “Moon in Libra.” The moon is low, casting a hazy glow over the cotton and a nearby shed, whose rusty tin roof signifies it’s seen many a harvest season. The piece represents a slice of rural South, a subject matter Sheila has returned to time and time again since moving back to the Natural State 13 years ago. “You’ve got to leave the South to kind of get it,” she says, describing years spent in Canada and then South Florida. “All those other experiences compounded, and I feel I can relate to both kinds of people—those who have left and come back, and those who have never left.”

While her previous bodies of work have focused on the human figure and landscapes from her time in Florida, the decade-plus she’s been back in Arkansas has found the artist turning toward scenes like the one pictured here, which is based on a field in Eudora. “Here, both in Arkansas and this time in history, modern life is so much retail and traffic, it pushes you out into what I’m going to call ‘the country’ to find beauty,” Sheila says. Details such as scarecrows and small town water towers have all drawn her attention—and her camera lens, as she snaps reference photos for future early morning painting sessions. “I like my turpentine with coffee,” she says.

Sheila’s paintings have become known for their agrarian settings, though she finds herself exploring more suburban interests currently; her most recent work is a series of swimming pools. “I just paint what I love,” she says. “Usually it is some old artifact in a field or the little odd corners, sort of old Southern genteel artifacts. You have to paint what you love. Otherwise, why bother?” Sheila’s work is available at sheilacottonart.com. 

“Moon in Libra” by Sheila Cotton, 24” x 36” oil on canvas