1990s Hells Angels Signed Print by Artist Billie Hutt (American, 1927 - 2007)

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Hell's Angels by Billie Hutt (American, 1927 - 2007)
Signed by the artist, dated 1992

A group of nuns on … Read more Hell's Angels by Billie Hutt (American, 1927 - 2007)
Signed by the artist, dated 1992

A group of nuns on bicycles riding through a countryside.

Billie Hutt was a self-taught artist who began painting in a folk art style akin to Grandma Moses at age 55 when she found herself with some leftover house paint and a desire to capture her memories in her paintings. In her words, "I wanted to tell my stories to the kids - My memories. As soon as they hear 'when I was your age' they tune out, but they will look at pictures, so I show them. I paint people I knew, places I saw, things I did - A kind of visual diary." Hutt's paintings have been collected by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, New York, New York and the International Museum of Folk Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Hutt graduated from Hofstra University and earned a master's degree in journalism from Carleton College. She became an editor of a small newspaper in Pottsdam, N.Y. and later joined the Air Force. Billie and her husband Ronald Labe moved to New York City in 1959 and lived on the Lower East Side. The couple was very active in Democratic politics and their circle included actor Zero Mostel, director Robert Downey Sr., actor James Earl Jones, The Mod Squad's Clarence Williams III, poet Allen Ginsberg, and radical Abbie Hoffman. Hutt organized efforts to clean up their neighborhood, working with members of the Hell's Angels. They fought for higher wages for teachers and campaigned for George McGovern.

In the 1970s, the family moved to Lake George where they became antique dealers. When they fell upon difficult financial times, Hutt began creating art using leftover house paint to make money. Eventually, they moved to Albuquerque and traveled to Santa Fe to sell Hutt's art. In 1987, they moved to Santa Fe, since Hutt's art was selling well there. Hutt's subjects included the Brooklyn Dodgers, a 1930s train trip through the segregated South, and a seven-panel work called "Exodus" that opened with the massacre of Jews in Russia.

According to Joyce Ice, director of the Museum of International Folk Art which has several works by Hutt in its collection, "She was a wonderful character. She did memory paintings -- family scenes, rites of passage -- documenting cultural traditions, and she was able to infuse Santa Fe and New Mexico, her adopted home, into that." According to gallery owner Leslie Muth,"She painted in a fanciful, simple, amusing style, and she had a great sense of humor". See less