Jeanne Seagle
“My love for art started early. I remember doing one particular drawing when I was about four and thinking “This is so great! I love it!” I still have that picture. And I kept on drawing.

I came up to Memphis in the late sixties to go to art school at the Art Academy (Memphis College of Art). I had great teachers: Burton Callicott, Bill Womack, Dolph Smith. And at my mural painting job, John Robinette.

After college Ellis Chappell and I opened an advertising art studio in an old cotton warehouse in pre-renovation downtown. We did lots of illustration and gave lots of parties. We fixed the building up and sold it, and I went to Europe on the profits.

I went to all the art museums I could find in France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. I studied the lives of the artists, and I did lots of painting. When I came home I kept on painting and traveling, mostly the American West and the Southern coast.

Now I’ve settled down. I have a house in Cooper-Young and I raise flowers and paint the landscape around here
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I support my art habit doing illustrations for books (five so far), magazines (Memphis Magazine), newspapers (“Flyer” covers, “News of the Weird”), murals (Bolla Pasta, Zinnie’s), posters (Cooper-Young Festival, The Shell, Playhouse on the Square),courtroom sketches, portraits, caricatures. Is there anything else? I hope so.

One career counselor said to me: “Specialize.” But I don’t want to, and don’t think I could.”

(photos of work by Jim Chappell)

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