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We have had this painting (second one below, Midnight and Moonbeam) in our family since I was a little girl, and it has always been a favorite. It got damaged and I began to look online to find out who P. Fullerton is, to see if I could find out if the artist has any other work. There is not much info to be had. Here’s what i got:
JoJo Stemple said: “I went to school at Tulane and spent a lot of time in the French Quarter. That’s where at my Phyllis. She was working in her gallery (Coghlan on Toulouse St.). I bought two pieces of her work. One of them she told me exactly where she was sitting when she was drawing. It has her sister’s house in the backgound. I have the photograph she gave me of her in the woods sketching that piece. I also have a picture of she and I together. I last saw her just before Katrina hit. I wonder if she’s still alive. Someone else has bought the gallery. Sweet, sweet lady- I treasure my two pieces and have them framed on the wall in my living room.”
“She lived or lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans and “looked approximately in her thirties in 1973.” Maybe her style changed as she aged.”
I met Phyllis in her gallery on Toulouse and of the 30-some times I’ve traveled to New Orleans, meeting her is my favorite experience. The horse painting on her wall looked like it would calmly walk out of the frame and into the room. Stunning. The painting she did while sitting in the middle of thick brush or thicket is the one I bitterly regret not buying. Money was scarce and I couldn’t touch it. She had a piece of rusted iron magnolia blossom that had been part of a wrought iron fence on a New Orleans area estate and she very graciously gave it to me, see that I was completely enamored with everything New Orleans. We talked a long time and I continued to correspond with her at another property where, I believe, she may have really considered home and I got the impression she painted there a lot or drew inspiration from that area. I’m guessing it was “horse country” and also, the brambles painting seemed to me at the time to also be vegetation of a more northern climate.
Phyllis was a kind, gentle soul, a true artist and such a generous person, both of herself, her time, and in my experience, her possessions. I treasure the wrought iron flower and small piece of branch as one of my most prized possessions. If this reaches any family members, estate or maybe even other devotees — anyone who might have her personal correspondence, if she saved any of my letters, I was the one who used the embossed purple flowers notepaper with a matching envelope. I’d SO welcome any information about her life details of her career — anything to bring her memory close. I will try on line for a catalog of her works. If anyone wants to get in touch with me and perhaps share a. photo on works of hers, I’d be ever so grateful. I know she’s passed away but if ancient lore is true, she’s never truly gone as long as someone still speaks her name. She’s often on my lips and always in my memory & heart so in some sense, if only with me, that beautiful artist’s soul still lives.