Kathy Shelton talked about extraordinary artist Helen LaFrance, who passed away last year at the age of 101.

LaFrance was a self-taught Black American artist born into a farming family in western Kentucky. Though the terms are confining, LaFrance is often described as both an outsider artist due to her lack of formal training and existence outside the cultural mainstream, and as a folk artist best known for her memory paintings of the disappearing lifestyle of the rural South. She was also a quilter and a woodcarver who painted a series of powerful visionary interpretations of the Bible.

Kathy Moses Shelton has been a newspaper reporter, a museum director and an historic preservationist. From 1996 to 2009, she was co-owner of Nashville and Palm Beach-based Shelton Gallery & Fine Silver and exhibited in antiques shows throughout the South and Southeast. She is the author of Outsider Art of the South and Helen LaFrance: Folk Art Memories. Most recently, Kathy appeared in the award-winning 2019 documentary Helen LaFrance Memories.