Florence painted murals for many buildings in Jacksonville, Florida. Some were in the Friday Musicale, where many people studied music, and one was on the USS Pennsylvania,or maybe just a Pennsylvania class ship, and it is now in a museum in Pennsylvania, she told me. It probably is signed with either Florence Gilbert, because it was painted before she was married to her third husband in 1966. She has been weak for only the last few years. She was 102 on June 8, 2006 before she died June 20, 2006. She was lucid until near the end. She told me she always considered her music to be her primary talent.
Florence studied art in New York (nudes) and also California and Florida. She was friends with Lee Marvin and also Jimmy Stewart, and many of the people of Jacksonville in the arts and sciences, as well. She had three children with the songwriter Vivian Gilbert.
After her husband died in 1985, she met me. She hadn't painted in a year, since his death, and didn't feel like painting. I encouraged her, and she began painting quite a bit. I don't think she painted anything after she turned 99, but she drew something for me Dec. 26, 2005.
2 comments:
She was my great aunt, my grandfather Lyle D. Crawford's sister. I am also a painter, her painting titled "The Power of the Sea" is the reason I loved art and aspired to create it as a child. What a wonderful spirit she had and she is missed and loved. She told me that once you painted a picture for someone they are always your friend....she was right..
Heather J. Crawford/Strout
Do you remember what "Power of the Sea" looked like? She said she sold a painting to someone from every State in the Union. She was prolific and had many paintings in the halls of the apartments when I first met her. She just stopped because Russell died.
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