Mary T. Smith was born in Mississippi and spent most of her adult life as a tenant farmer and a cook for other families.  In 1980, she took tin panels her son had planned to use to build a shed and painted them with animals and figures, hanging the paintings on her fence around her yard in Hazlehurst, the Mississippi town to which she had moved in the 1970's.  She continued painting on boards after the fence was completed and put the images around her yard, eventually creating a one-acre environment with her art.