Sybil Gibson
(1908–1995)
BornDora, Alabama, United States
DiedDunedin, Florida, United States
BiographyEthereal faces with dark eyes, abstract patterns, and flowers, birds, and landscapes that seem to emerge from a dream all materialize from the murky surfaces of Sybil Gibson’s art. Her preferred surfaces—paper grocery bags soaked in water, large sheets of newspaper, and scraps of cardboard—add to her work’s ephemeral quality. Most of her hundreds of pieces were made with tempera, acrylic, or watercolors; she allowed her brush to move softly and intuitively, letting childhood memories or her imagination guide the fluid forms.Born in 1908 in Dora, Alabama, Gibson spent the majority of her life in Alabama and Florida. She earned a degree at Jacksonville State Teachers College; although she took an art course, it failed to spark her interest. Instead, she became an elementary-school teacher. As she recalled in an interview for the 1994 book Revelations: Alabama’s Visionary Folk Artists, she had her artistic epiphany on Thanksgiving Day 1963 while shopping in Miami. She was suddenly captivated by the beauty of some wrapping paper: “I stood there and drank it in, and I said to myself, ‘It’s so beautiful, so charming, and yet so simple I could do it myself.’ Then is when I got the light. I boarded a bus and went home and started painting.” Since brown paper bags were what she had on hand, she used them as her canvas for the tempera paints she had left over from teaching.
She shared her art with local galleries; it could also be seen hanging on a clothesline outside her house. When she was featured in a 1971 show at the Miami Museum of Modern Art, however, she was nowhere to be found and had fallen out of touch with her family and friends. The review in the Miami Herald asked in its headline, “Sybil Gibson, Artist, Where Are You?” She turned up living meagerly in a hotel in Alabama.
A decline in vision caused Gibson to stop painting, but she returned to her art after cataract surgery, working daily in the nursing home in Dunedin, Florida, where she spent her final years near her daughter. When she died, in 1995, her Birmingham Post-Herald obituary included her affirmation, “Painting is my happiness.”
Allison C. Meier, 2025
This artist’s work was reviewed as part of “Rethinking Biography,” an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).