Jere hardy allen biography

Jere Hardy Allen, an internationally known figurative painter who has been called the Mississippi Rembrandt, was born on 15 August in Selma, Alabama. Early on, inspired by landscapes and wildlife paintings made by his great-grandmother, Annie Bell Rives Hardy, he decided he, too, wanted to be an artist and began drawing constantly.

He was often a challenge to his teachers, including one who scolded him in front of his classmates for drawing a nude during school—in fifth grade. Undaunted, Allen kept drawing and completed high school, and after working at a television station in Montgomery, Alabama, and joining the US Marine Corps Reserve, he decided to attend the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida.

He received his bachelor’s of fine arts from Ringling in , earned a master’s of fine arts from the University of Tennessee in , and became an instructor at Carson-Newman College before joining the art faculty at the University of Mississippi in He taught painting and d