Sallie Middleton was not only a friend's grandmother, and another friend's mother; she was an inspiration and reminder of all things in nature.
I grew up surrounded by Sallie Middleton paintings. My grandparents had two cottages in the Mountains of North Carolina that had her amazing watercolors hanging on each wall. Her images take you right back to the woods and place you in a distant memory coated with moss and smelling like sunshine.
Here is a clip from the Asheville Citizen-Times and a few of her paintings...
"Middleton spent much of her childhood in the Chunn's Cove house designed and built by her uncle — legendary Asheville architect Douglass Ellington who designed Asheville's iconic Art Deco city hall, First Baptist Church, S&W Cafeteria and other landmarks. Middleton's father, Kenneth Ellington, introduced her not only to the natural world, but also to nature's imaginary world. Fairies and elves sometimes appeared in her paintings.
Like her father, Middleton had a love for animals. People would frequently bring injured animals to her, and once she rescued a litter of orphaned kittens. After grooming the stray felines, she placed brightly colored ribbons around each of their necks, tied them into fancy bows and placed them in a basket. She walked around Biltmore Village with the basket until all of the kittens had been adopted.
When Mrs. Middleton was working on the painting “Chipmunks in August,” she used as models a tree stump and a pair of injured chipmunks she had nursed back to health — a common practice for her. Each day she would hike to the same tree stump with her paints and easel. When the painting was almost finished, her sister suggested she incorporate a blue jay feather into the composition as she had once previously done. She didn't follow the suggestion during her three years of work on the painting until a blue jay feather fell from the sky and landed at her feet. The plume also appeared in all her future work.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Middleton was considered one of the most talented wildlife watercolor artists in the country. Her work can be viewed in the three books she illustrated and her autobiography, “The Magical Realm of Sallie Middleton.” Her art is included in private collections across the U.S. and is on permanent public display in the Harry Dalton Collection at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, and in the Gibbes Art Gallery and at Magnolia Gardens, in Charleston, S.C. “We used to talk about climbing a ladder to heaven together,” lamented Jennifer Waring, a childhood friend."
Citizen-Times Mark-Ellis Bennett • August 9, 2009
