ARTIST

She was a farm girl who was also a World War II captain. She was a strong-willed woman who was also one of the warmest people you ever met. Even at an old age, she continued to create spectacular and unforgettable paintings. Remley was the fourth person to be inducted as a Legend in the Arts at the Averitt Center.

 

Patricia Carter, who is chairman of the Betty Foy Sanders Art Department at Georgia Southern University, was commissioned to create the portrait of Remley, which will permanently hang in the Averitt Center. As homage to Remley, Carter said she used mixed media to create the portrait – working much as Roxie would herself.

 

“The day I met Roxie certainly changed my life forever,” said Carter, who is a long-time friend.

 

Born in 1919, Remley grew up on a farm near Darlington, Indiana. She graduated from Peabody College with bachelors and master’s degrees in art education before attending the prestigious Pratt Institute School of Art in New York City where she earned a master of fine arts. During World War II she served in the Women’s Army Corps where she was assigned to a top-secret antiaircraft gun battery experiment in Washington D.C. She attained the rank of captain before leaving the service in 1946. In 1950, she came to what was then Georgia Teachers College where she molded a few art education courses into an academic department. She taught drawing, painting and art history at Georgia Southern for 26 years, retiring in 1976.

In the years since, she has produced art. She has shown her work in over 100 exhibitions, including 20 solo exhibitions. At age 90 she produced “Edge of 90,” her 20th solo exhibition titled, “Beethoven’s Eroica.”

 

In addition to her art, Remley was active with the Averitt Center for the Arts, the Statesboro Civic Garden Club, the Bulloch County Historical Society, and Statesboro First United Methodist Church and was a lifetime member of the Statesboro Regional Art Association.

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The Statesboro, Averitt Center for the Arts and Georgia Southern icon passed away on January 25, 2019 at Ogeechee Area Hospice. She was 99.