Mildred Wood Sherwood

Mildred Wood Sherwood
-2018
Mildred Sherwood, née Wood, who has died at a great age in Savannah, Georgia, was a gifted painter and a lifelong beauty, much admired in her native Houston for her natural ability to be very charming, very funny, sometimes outrageously outspoken, and to get exactly what she wanted.
Her date of birth is withheld because she made it plain that she would kill the writer of these words if he dared to reveal it.
Jessie Wood (née Felder, Mildred's mother) was from Huntsville, Texas, and her father, Andrew Cox Wood, was a brilliant lawyer from the same town. Mildred was born in Fort Worth; her family moved to Houston soon after, where her father joined the law firm of Baker Botts. As a child, Mildred was in the legendary inaugural class at Kinkaid School in Houston, where she made three lifelong friends who were every bit as as formidable as she was: Jane Blaffer Owen, Carolyn Grant Fay and Alice Evans-Pratt.
All were alive and in touch with each other until a few years ago.
After Kinkaid, Mildred attended Halmorole Preparatory School in Connecticut and went on to Sophie Newcombe College in New Orleans, where her art studies sparked a passion that was to last for the rest of her life. She made her début with Allegro in 1935 and in the same year was chosen as the Duchess of Houston, representing her city at the Battle of Flowers in San Antonio. At 22, she married William Frederick Dixon: the couple had three daughters. In her thirties she began painting full time and studied in Taxco in Mexico, Positano in Italy, and the art school of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, later working with Jimmy Ernst, the son of Max Ernst. Over a long career her work was shown at museums and galleries all over Texas, in London and at the Knoedler Gallery in New York, as well as being included in the permanent collection of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. In her own highly original style, she painted vivid images in oils of early Houston, from the (then) virgin woodlands of Memorial Drive to the Fifth Ward; later, while living in Guatemala and Mexico, she captured the colour and mystery of traditional religious ceremonies, as well as scenes from her own magically-populated imagination.
In the 1950's, Mildred was one of the founding members of the C.G. Jung Centre in Houston, along with Ruth Fry, Carolyn Fay,Ella Winston, Alma Lloyd and Ethel Kurth. After her separation from Fred Dixon, she married Paul Sherwood, with whom she lived happily until his death in 1997. The couple travelled extensively together and became deeply involved in Vipassana meditation, as taught by the Thai master Dhirawamsa. Thereafter Mildred and Paul were instrumental in bringing the meditation of mindfulness to Texas.
Mildred is survived by Deborah Dixon Roberts, of Lupiac, France; Andrea Dixon Walker of Savannah, Georgia, and Mildred Wood Dixon of Brenham, Texas; by her grandchildren Cheshire Nash McIntosh, John Nesfield Roberts, Savannah Roberts Batlle, Christopher Wood Dixon McIntosh, and James Andrew Walker; and by her great-grandchildren Esme Josephine Batlle, Louise Nesfield Roberts, Nash Badger McIntosh and Andrea Elizabeth McIntosh.
It is impossible to convey the energy, fun and eccentricity of Mildred's life in a stark account with a beginning, middle and end. To the last she remained one of those rare individualists who die young at a very great age. When asked by a journalist for her best advice to young artists, her instant response - no doubt delivered with gentle irony from behind those very dark sunglasses - was "Try to see things your own way".
That's what she always did, and those lucky enough to have known her were the better for it.