Primitive artist Clara McDonald Williamson, born November 20, 1875, in Iredell, Texas, lived to be one hundred years of age, dying in Dallas, Texas, February 17, 1976. It was a good thing she was so long-lived, because it wasn't until 1943 that she took up painting at the age of sixty-eight. Until that time, she appears to have been a household drudge, spending her life with chores both before and after her marriage in 1903, when her work included child-rearing. It was only after her husband died, that she was able to study art.

But her problems hadn't ended. She was discouraged from studying art by the faculty at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, so she audited a class there while taking night classes at the Dallas Museum of Fi...