The Famous Mouth Artist of Texas Nyla Gladine Thompson Texas Art BOOK by Jim Linderman

My new book is NYLA GLADINE THOMPSON: The Famous Texas Mouth Artist. It is a remarkable story, She was a victim of infant polio, and taught herself to paint while paralyzed with a brush in her mouth. 8 x 11 and 40 pages. With 40 original paintings from my collection and her first biography. The printed softcover book has 40 pages. The much more affordable Ebook will be available shortly. A brief excerpt is here and a link to purchase. Only the hardcopy is available, the more affordable ebook will be soon. Nyla Gladine Thompson was born in 1928, the daughter of Lillie and Pum Roy Thompson. The family were tenant farmers from near Glen Flora, Texas. They were not wealthy and there was a Depression around the corner. She was struck with infantile polio nine years later in 1937. She lost the use of her legs, arms, and most of her torso up to her neck. It was unknown if she would survive. She retained a small bit of utility in one hand but was confined to a wheelchair and held in by straps for the rest of her life. Then after seeing a friend's watercolor set it was with great determination she also began to paint and completed her first reasonable result in 1938. She found it was possible to hold a paint brush in her mouth which she was able to direct with the slight available movements of her head. It was slow, tedious work. The early works were tentative, crude and often marked with unusual but distinctive pecked strikes at the paper. At the age of 13 in 1940 she had painted enough to have been written about in an AP wire story which ran in a hundred or more local newspapers across the country. The story notes all her brushwork was done with the tool in her mouth. It also notes the young artist was making a quilt by holding one handle of the scissors in her teeth and the other in her "uncertain" right hand. This disability is visible by the misshapen hand in the photo of the artist at work shown on the cover. She became famous by overcoming her disability and becoming a master painter, many which were turned into postcards in the 1950s. https://www.blurb.com/b/12353852-nyla-gladine-thompson-the-mouth-artist-of-texas