Kuimeaux
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House in the Garden of Mystery, 1985 -
House of the Blue Hydrangea, 1990
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Wisteria Bayou, 1984
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Bayou Garden, 1983
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Bars & Nightclubs in the ArkLaMiss Envelopes Series, 2010
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7th Son Plantation, 2003
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Eudora Welty Envelopes Series, 2001
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Bayou Bartholomew, Arkansas, 1990
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Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, 1982
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Shoppach House, Benton, Arkansas, 1973
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Delta Mystic
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Fourche Bayou at Little Rock
BIOGRAPHY
Arkansas native Dwight “Kuimeaux” Drennan created art that reflected his deep knowledge and love of the land, culture and history of the South, particularly the Delta region of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Vivid scenes of beautiful bayous, cultivated fields and small Delta towns are depicted in many of his paintings and drawings.
Kuimeaux (KEE-mo) was born in 1950 in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he lived until his family moved to the small town of Haskell in Saline County when he was in the 9th grade. He finished high school at nearby Harmony Grove School, then attended the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he completed a BA in Political Science with a History minor.
His heart was set on going into politics when he started college, but that changed in his senior year when he decided to pursue his other great passion, art. He took some art courses and, encouraged by one of his art instructors, embarked on a career as an artist.
For the next 50 years Kuimeaux would live in Monroe, Louisiana (10 years) and the rest of his life back in central Arkansas, making art all the while and supporting himself by working odd jobs.
Though commercial success eluded him, he did enjoy significant recognition of his work early in his career. He was selected three times for the annual Delta Exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center (now Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts) and had work exhibited at numerous art fairs and festivals in Louisiana and Arkansas. He had one-artist exhibitions at Rountree Gallery, Monroe and the Arkansas Arts Council, Little Rock, and later in his career, one at Arkansas Art Gallery, North Little Rock, Arkansas in 2006, which would be his last.
Kuimeaux passed away in 2022 at his home in Sherwood, Arkansas.
ARTIST STATEMENT
This is the only artist statement Kuimeaux is known to have written. He wrote it more than 20 years ago when he lived on Bearskin Lake near Scott, Arkansas.
"I live on a cypress-fringed old river lake in the Arkansas Delta southeast of Little Rock. The luxuriant flora, the big sky over flat, fertile fields, the bayous, the swamps and great rivers have often given me inspiration for my paintings and drawings.
I have an intense feeling for this land and its people – for example, when I stand under or touch an ancient cypress tree; when I think how very quickly Nature would reclaim this land and its waters were it not for man’s interventions; or when I think of, and as I live, the human experience – both joyous and tragic – in the Deep South. My expression of these overwhelming emotions is through art.
Because my work most often depicts Southern scenes, some might associate it with a sort of “regionalism,” which is fine for those who enjoy it on that level. (Obviously, I do, too.) However, it is my hope that the viewer may see, and feel, something in my work that is universal."
- Kuimeaux Drennan
January 2000