Page 43 - AARF 2019-2020
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Jim’s curiosity about the “Best deal I ever made.” He lost his
Highwaymen was satisfied. He wife of 63 years in 2016. I knew
understood that the public’s Anne, and his admission is not
overwhelming interest in their hyperbolic.
paintings provided what he insists Jim, Anne, and their three boys
is the beginning of “Florida’s discovered “Paradise,” in the form
contemporary art tradition.” of Fort Basinger. It had been a
Jim is entrepreneurial. He must Seminole War outpost, now a bend
have known that his time was in the road in cattle country far
better spent exploring from the coast, at least
fresh possibilities as far as one could be
while someone else from the ocean or gulf
obsessively-compulsively in Florida. It had history,
dug deeply into the about the kind of rugged
minutia of the largely frontiersmen who
unknown story of the worked with their hands
artists behind the nearly for what they had, with
forgotten paintings. In wit and tenacity. Think
other words, Jim knew of John Wayne with
what I was getting into cabbage palms or read
long before I did, and Patrick Smith’s novel,
hence the smirk. A Land Remembered.
Jim was born in Ohio Jim & Anne Fitch Jim had clearly lost
in 1935 and his parents interest in the mid-1960s
moved the family to Oakland Park, changes and developments to
a Fort Lauderdale suburb, when he southeast coastal Florida living,
was three what is
years old. now the
So Jim is a megalopolis
Floridian, that extends
and to prove from Jupiter
the point, through
he says, he Homestead–
married The Gold
Anne Smith, Coast. Jim
a seventh recalls: “The
generation move to Fort
Florida Basinger
native on gave me an
her mother’s entirely new
side, who outlook on
was an life. I loved
Albritton, Al Black the people
a sixth generation Floridian from and I loved the place. If anyone
Bowling Green, as small as a town asked me where I was from, I
could be in interior Florida. Jim would tell them Fort Basinger.”
believes that art and commerce Jim was focused on learning,
are synergistic. Hence, it is no captivated by his new home.
small admission when Jim says, Continued >
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