Laura Craig McNellis was born in 1957 in Nashville, USA, as the youngest of four sisters. McNellis greatly enjoyed painting from a very young age and did so regularly, using tempera on blank newsprint as her medium, which she still uses as her only medium. Because McNellis is non-literate and her speech understood only by family members, her paintings have become an extraordinary means of personal expression. Often a painting portrays an episode from her day and sometimes a series of works will develop from a particular event that fascinated her. As soon as a work is completed, the artist writes large letters across the bottom margin and usually cuts out the corners. However, McNellis is careful to preserve a fragment of the brightly-rayed yellow sun that almost invariably appears in the upper-right corner. Another recurring image are the small fluffy clouds that line the top edge of each painting. Her works can be found in the High Museum of Art, USA, in The Keen Collection of Outsider Art, USA, in the Robson Family Collection, USA, among others, and have been presented in numerous exhibitions.
