Lory winford
~ by Rachel Perry
Artist Lory Winford talks about being in her“ sixth life,” and she claims it’ s fortunate that nobody asks exactly what she means. But the spirit of her latest life began with a move to her grandmother’ s Nashville cabin in the spring of 2016 and the hanging of a shingle welcoming visitors to her artist studio.“ My grandma was dear friends with Ruth Bessire [ wife of early Brown County artist Dale Bessire ] and knew a lot of the original artists and their stories.
“ I’ ve always wanted to be an artist,” she continued.“ I went to my dad and he said,‘ I’ m not paying for you to go to school to be an artist. I’ ll pay for you to be a teacher, and you can be an artist on the side.’ But I always played with pastels and would sit on Grandma’ s porch and paint whenever we visited here.”
With her warm brown eyes and friendly face, Winford’ s hospitality makes every curious visitor feel comfortable. Her image-filled studio and country style cabin are conducive to lingering. Numerous repeat-visitors treat her like an old friend during the fall Brown County Studio Tours, an annual event that has included her studio for
courtesy photo
the past eight years. This year she has decided to take a break, as she experiments with a change in media. She’ s decided to switch to oil paint.
Although primarily self-taught, Winford has taken workshops with Barbara Jenieke and Marla Bagetta as well as Carol Strock-Wasson. She identifies workshops through the American Pastel Society’ s local chapters to determine what
58 Our Brown County May / June 2026