Arlee Mains: A Life in Watauga
June 28 - November 29, 2025 | Rankin East Gallery
This intimate installation of ten “memory paintings” by Arlee Mains (1935–2019) offers a vivid and affectionate portrait of early 20th-century life in the mountains of western North Carolina. A lifelong resident of Watauga County and a self-taught artist, Mains drew upon family stories, personal recollections, and regional traditions to create painted scenes of everyday Appalachian life. Her works portray the rhythms of domestic labor, childhood mischief, seasonal rituals, and communal joy—milking cows at dawn, dancing on a Saturday night, or greeting the mailman after a deep snow. Each painting is paired with a handwritten narrative by the artist, capturing her distinctive voice and grounding these images in lived experience. These stories have been transcribed and recorded by a local community member, and are available to hear at a listening station in the center of the gallery. Mains’ gift was not just in recalling what happened, but in conjuring the texture of memory: the smell of lye soap, the bite of cold air before a sled ride, the warmth of apple pie after church.
This exhibition was curated by Pam McKay of Art Cellar Gallery in Banner Elk, NC.
Arlee Mains: A Life in Watauga is made possible by generous support from Michael & Mary Bost Gray and LifeStore Bank & Insurance.
What Is a Self-Taught Artist?
Self-taught art refers to creative work made outside of formal academic or institutional training. In the United States, this has long been a robust and deeply rooted tradition, especially in rural communities where artmaking often emerges from domestic life, religious practice, or regional storytelling. Rather than being shaped by the conventions of art schools or museums, self-taught artists typically draw from lived experience, craft knowledge, and community memory.
Arlee Mains worked in this lineage. Without formal training, she developed a deeply personal style grounded in recollection and place. Her “memory paintings” evoke the Appalachian past with clarity and tenderness, recording family scenes, local customs, and everyday rhythms. This form—intimate, narrative, and retrospective—belongs to a long-standing American genre often called memory painting.
Beginning in the mid-20th century, self-taught artists gained growing recognition from collectors, scholars, and museums. Earlier terms like outsider art or art brut—which framed such artists as raw or other—have increasingly been critiqued for their exoticizing or marginalizing connotations. Today, artists like Mains are better understood as vital contributors to the broader story of American art, offering perspectives shaped not by exclusion, but by rich, alternative modes of knowing and remembering.