Various landscape drawings Miriam did throughout the decades. She often sketched while she waited at appointment and events.

Like most artists, Miriam loved flowers of all kinds. She often painted the flowers people brought her or she planned on giving others. She maintained an extensive garden of flowers around her Birmingham, Alabama home and studio, and often stopped at homes in the neighborhood to paint the neighbor's flowers.

Scenes of everyday Southern life and the cultural history of Birmingham and Alabama.

Miriam's family owned a cottage on the Coosa River before it was dammed to form Lake Logan Martin in Alabama. Miriam spent many hours as a child with family along the river and cottage and later as an adult on Lake Logan Martin. Note: she was not a fisherman (but her mother was!).

Miriam paints the landscapes of the American South, in particular, her native Alabama but also Tennessee and North Carolina.

Miriam has been painting with pastels for over fifty years. She loves the freedom and graphic qualities of pastels to invoke movement and get an idea on paper quickly.

She typically uses the Winsor & Newton oil pastels and sheets of Mi-Teintes pastel papers. 

If you see a piece that you like. Please let us know!

Portraits spanning six decades in all mediums and many different styles.

Throughout the 1980s Miriam spent several summers in Burnsville, NC attending the Burnsville Painting Classes (SeeCelo). There were many opportunities to work on portraits in the class with an emphasis on watercolor. During her time at the Burnsville Painting classes, she explored and honed her watercolor techniques on people and landscapes. This phase loosed her style and would play a part in how she approached pastel work in the 1990s.

“My favorite place was the Burnsville Painting Classes. John Bryan and Everret Kivette were teachers there who took over the classes started by Frank Stanley Herring and his wife, Frances. I attended classes there in the summer for two weeks over ten years. The criticism was frank but never cutting. These are some of the portraits from those classes.”

This is some of Miriam's early (1960 and earlier) portrait work, including some self portraits.

These are portraits of Miriam's close or extended family members.

Portraits of Miriam done by Miriam at different point in her life.

Works done within the last two years by Miriam.