J. Kim Sessums realized he need not search for his own style. After a lifetime spent exploring his creative impulses, it found him. By age 6, he had survived the separate deaths of both parents and continued his childhood at his grandparents home on a rural Mississippi backroad. Overcoming boredom and loneliness in a small town, his imagination led to an unexpected joy of studying the character and form of those around him. Whether black, white, old, young, city folk or country their every nuance was committed to memory, recorded in written journals and then turned into visual art.

Constant artistic observation allowed him to experience the varied worlds of the rural south in ways others can not. The natural way he translated their qualities through graphite particles on paper, paint or bronze seemed to command his works to speak, occasionally sing, or even slap the viewer in the face, making them take a closer look and setting them off on their own journey into self retrospection.