Western influence: a Mississippi artist finds unlikely inspiration and success in early Native American-style painting.

Sometimes life or art can change in an instant. That was the case for Carrollton artist Zona Pilgreen, who was struck by the beauty of early Native American painting on leather and decided immediately she had to learn the technique.

"I was in the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, when I saw the paintings. I knew I wanted to learn to do that," she says. She set out to do whatever it took to paint in this distinctive style, including spending weeks in a museum. She also made personal contact with as many Native American artists as would talk to her.

"I went back and found older Indian artists, mostly from Plains and Pueblo tribes, and asked them to teach me," Pilgreen says. "I told them I wanted to know about their history. They often recorded history on painted hides and ledgers that settlers left behind. Some of them were willing to show me even how to make the natural pigments with buffalo chips in fire and clay."

Learning to paint in this manner took her also to Native American powwows. She laughs when she tells of her experience staying with a Lakota Sioux medicine man and his wife in a tepee. "They are both psychologists, and they flew back to Boston when the powwow was over," she says.

The Indian-style painting on deer hide was a natural fit for Pilgreen, who has a Choctaw heritage on her maternal grandmother's side and a passion for all things Western. "I love and respect the outdoors, the colors of life. I always meant to live in Santa Fe, but Mississippi is home," she says.

The canvases for Pilgreen's art include leather furnishings and accessories like ottomans, screens, chairs, pillows, bedding, wall hangings, and frames. Her works have found their way into homes of notable figures such as longtime Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who spotted her work in a gallery in Aspen, where he was building a home. He ordered a 12-by-25-foot leather shade for a high window. "It had to have white horses on it," she says. "He also ordered a screen to match his grand piano, white with gold inlays. I told his secretary I was too ill to do the work, because I was pregnant with my son, Jim Tom. She insisted that he wanted the shade very badly and said she didn't want to disappoint him, so I did it."

One of Pilgreen's first art-related memories is of a painting of a mother deer and fawn done on the back of a paint-by-number picture. "My sister Rhoda and I didn't like the pictures, so we turned them over and painted on the back," she says. When her parents realized the twins had a talent for art, they began to buy them art supplies.

While she was born into a creative family--her mother was a poet and writer who won several Southern Literary Festival prizes and her father studied photography in New York--Pilgreen had no formal art training until college at Southeastern Louisiana University, where she met famed portrait and fabric artist Robert Nix. "He didn't have family there, so he would come home with us and stay with our family near Brookhaven on weekends," she says. She studied portraiture under Nix and started out commercially painting portraits and wildlife.

In the mid-1980s, Pilgreen traveled to Santa Fe armed with portfolios. "It was the third-largest art market in the world. At that time, I did a lot of wolves and elk," she says. A gallery took some of her work and included it in a catalog. "They wanted some smaller items. I thought it would be nice to have something you could use in a home, so I made pillows from deer hides I bought," she says. "From this catalog, other galleries in Santa Fe and Vail picked up my work."

Her art was beginning to be recognized more widely, but an even bigger break came when she and her husband, Jim, took some items to the American Paint Horse Association's World Show in Fort Worth. "We had blankets with leather edging and chairs. A man walked into our booth and said he was interested in promoting art."

The man was well-known designer and businessman Crittenden Rawlings, who had recently left his position as president of the Polo Ralph Lauren men's division. "We went to dinner, and he asked if he could show my work. He's been a godsend. He will call and say, 'I have someone interested in this or that.' I never know who he'll connect me with."

Rawlings, who now has his own clothing company, Crittenden & Company importers, says he has admired Pilgreen's creativity for the last 20 years. "What makes her collection unique is her great passion and love for the wonderful American West. The quality and refinement of her art are outstanding," he says.

His connections, as well as those from various Western galleries, have brought Pilgreen's work to the attention of interior designers and celebrities, including Randy Travis, George Strait, Cher, Bill Clinton, Ralph Lauren, and others who have purchased items for their homes.

One of her most enthusiastic clients was Princess Diana's companion Dodi Al-Fayed, who bought numerous items from Pilgreen over a period of three years. "I did a lot of work for him. The last thing he wanted was two blankets with Indian Hawk bells with ringers removed. I was at a show in Copper Mountain, Colorado, when I spoke to his secretary and told her I had shipped the blankets. She said he was out of town, in Paris."

Pilgreen still gets emotional when she talks about waking up and watching the televised reports of Dodi and Princess Diana's fatal accident. The blankets were for Diana's sons, Princes Harry and William, and destined for a home he had bought for her. "His father has them," she says.

In another consequential turn of events, while attending the Safari Club International convention in Reno, Pilgreen was selected to go to Africa on behalf of the Malilangwe Artists' Trust. The trust chooses two artists each year to go to Malilangwe, a 105,000-acre reserve in Zimbabwe, to study and reproduce Bushman cave paintings and pass on this knowledge to local artists so they can better support themselves.

The seven-week trip was an exciting and satisfying experience, she says, as she was able to help local Zimbabwean artists as well as add African-inspired designs to her own repertoire. "The colors are so natural, the people so eager to better themselves," she says. After studying Bushman and Masai designs, she found that many were similar to those of the Plains Indians.

Like other artists before her, Pilgreen left two pieces of her work for the museum in Africa. Art is sold from time to time as local villages need extra income, she explains.

Pilgreen's church and community have often benefited from her artistic ability, which she shares freely, creating backgrounds for dramatic or musical productions. She also used her talent on a mission trip to Romania, where she illustrated Christ's crucifixion as an evangelist told the story in public arenas.

The town of Carrollton, which is working toward revitalization of its old downtown, will benefit from her latest project, the Carroll County Picture Show, a gallery dedicated to her own art as well as that of other Mississippi artists that she expects to open in May. She plans to coordinate with Miss Sippy's, a downtown restaurant, to host themed dinners.

Besides her African and Native American art, Pilgreen hopes to incorporate other types of art she likes into the gallery's displays. A dog lover, she enjoys painting portraits of dogs or pictures with dogs in them, such as one that now hangs in the front office at Viking Range Corporation in Greenwood.

The artist has turned down opportunities for greater visibility and remuneration to continue to spend quality time with family. But for lucky clients who purchase her work through galleries or from her Web site, Pilgreen continues to produce livable works of art that honor times gone by.