Biography of Wylie Stirrett

My mother worked for Disney – 1939 to 1941.  Her name was Marion Wylie Stirrett and she signed her work Wylie Stirrett.

 Here is a brief outline of her career:

Graduated from Art Center School in Los Angeles;

Awarded full scholarship to USC based on an oil she did entitled “The Professor.”  I have this as one of the pieces that were never sold.

It is 1939.  My mother is 27 years old, married to my dad, Lloyd A. Stirrett, M.D.  and living in Los Angeles.  Dad is a doctor doing his residency in surgery so they have little money and mom has to work. 

Enter Disney.  Mom is an accomplished artist and graduate of Art Center School in Los Angeles.  She goes to work in the Background Dept. at Disney.  She is the first and for the entire time she is there the ONLY  woman in this department.  She works at the Hyperion location.

She is beautiful, vivacious, and has a wonderful sense of humor.  She has landed in the perfect environment – working with the best of the best artists/cartoonists who draw and paint and make people laugh.  Mom laughed a lot while working as the ONLY woman in the Department. 

She was teased unmercifully and loved every minute of it!!!  Ralph Wright had a crush on Mom as is apparent by the cartoons that were passed around among her fellow-workers, poking fun at his doting on her every move.

She quit Disney in 1941 to be with my Dad in Hawaii where he was deployed as a physician in the U.S. Navy where he served in the Pacific Theatre until the end of the war.

During those years Mom taught art and continued to create.  Over her lifetime she had many shows and was recognized in the Who’s Who of American Art.  She sold most of her works while she was alive.  She loved to paint people and spent much of her time painting comisioned portraits.  She had an ability to capture the essence of her subjects.   I have only a few of her later works which were  oil and sculptures because of her popularity and quality of her work.  She kept many of her charcoals and watercolors from her earlier years and those are the ones I have the most of.  She also kept a few of the oils and I have everything that she chose not to sell.  I hope to find more of her art that was sold by searching the Internet.  In that regard I have located several pieces that I had never seen during her lifetime.

As far as the Disney works she saved, I  have a small collection of some of her works on Dumbo, Bambi and Fantasia.   She worked on the backgrounds in Fantasia.  She developed a technique that was her own invention bringing the backgrounds to life.  I am working on creating a complete biography of my mother’s life.  As noted above, she was a renowned commissioned portrait artist as well as landscape artist.  She has pieces hanging in various famous locations, including her pastel of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia which was  hanging in the Royal Palace in Saudia Arabia  and may still be there.  It was commissioned by the king’s son who she met through mutual friends when the prince came to visit in La Jolla, CA where my mother lived the last 20 years of her life.  As with some of the pieces she did that were sold, I only have a photo of it that she took.  I think this one is a Polaroid. 

If it sounds as if I am bragging, I guess I am.  I am so proud of the artist and person she was.  Some people are extraordinary and she was one of those.  I feel privileged to have known her and being the keeper of her art is a trust I take very seriously.

She respected and admired Walt Disney and recognized her talent as an artist in his own right.  She felt nohored to be the first womany working on many of his movies.  They were kindred spirits – both imaginative, creative and  talented.  Walt saw these qualities in my mother as he did in most of the people he worked with.  

In that regard, I have a watercolor that she did during her years at Disney that was not kept as part of her “Disney” materials.  It is just one of the many watercolors she created and never framed.  I was able to frame everything she left me on museum quality matting and glass so all are now safe in my home.  The one I think is so exciting is a watercolor called “Toonerville” which I believe to be the idea Disney used to create Toontown.   Mom never took credit, but that is because she was not one to need credit.  She was very humble.  She knew she was good, but never bragged.  She could capture a person’s spirit in her portraits and that kind of talent speaks for itself.  She was also a mentor and teacher of art to many over her lifetime.  She gave of herself up until her last days on earth when she passed on 10/29/2002 at the ripe old age of 90. 

"Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you!" -Bobbie Stirrett Barker, daughter of Marion Wylie Stirrett email me at: thewylieone@gmail.com