Mary Tillman Smith lived in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. She had a minimal church and primary school education. Mary T. took corrugated tin panels her son intended for a shed and painted them in 1980. She said she did so to “brighten up the yard and please the Lord”. Her small wooden house is on a main street leading into Hazelhurst and she was considered eccentric.

In 1985 Mary T. had a stroke which affected her ability to write and speak but not her desire to beautify her hillside. Friends and dealers brought her wood panels for her to paint. Her boards are as powerful as the images on tin. Mary T. was first shown publicly in “Baking in the Sun: Visionary Images from the South” at the University Art Museum, Lafayette, Louisiana, 1987.