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Burgess Dulaney

(16 Dec 1914 - 27 June 2001) was a Mississippi folk artist who spent his entire life in Itawamba County, Mississippi, working on the family farm and only attending a very few years of formal school training.

Burgess grew up at the end of a red clay dirt road named Dulaney Road where he would spend all of his 80 plus years, never traveling or going very far from his home. He spent the last 25 or so years working with his hands to fashion the fantastical mud sculptures, often referred to by Burgess as “pots”, of which he would become synonymous.

Family Life

Burgess was the son of Henry Davis Dulaney (1861-1939) and Minnie May Whitehead Dulaney (1876-1934) and was one of 11 children. His second wife, Essie took her own life in the original Dulaney family log cabin 16 April 1986.

Mud Sculptures

In the mid-to-late 1970’s, Burgess began creating solid mud sculptures made from native clay dug form pits behind the family home. The fantastical works were made without interior support, some of the solid pieces weighing nearly fifty pounds. Most of the unfired works are similar in size to a soccer ball or basketball. In addition to the solid pieces, Dulaney also fashioned thin-walled and hollow, vessel-like works that refer to more utilitarian style pottery and classic southern face jugs.

His gift of several pieces in the mid 1980’s to local merchants led to the discovery of his talent.

The endless supply of locally dug clay allowed him to create many fascinating “critters”, and “creatures”  including unusual multi-sided human forms, animal caricatures and vessels,  many of which have stunning characteristics and similarities to Pre-Columbian and Native American artifacts.

Some of the clay, which has a high iron content, tends to darken over time, lending an almost eerie effect to his works. Documented Works

There are approximately 450 pieces of Dulaney’s creations accounted for, held in both museum and private collections.

Publications:

Baking in the Sun: Visionary Images from the South 1987

Contemporary American Folk Art - A Collector’s Guide 1996

Raw Vision  - Journal of Intuitive and Visionary Art #19 - 1997

Mississippi Mud - Artworks from the Collection of Terry Nowell - 2003

Light of the Spirit - Portraits of Southern Outsider Artists - 1998