HILTON HEAD, S.C.—Art and collecting are embedded in Louanne LaRoche’s genes. Born to parents who were both pack rats and art lovers, she grew up in Pittsburgh and accompanied them on many trips to New York to see and acquire artworks.

In college, LaRoche studied painting at Carnegie Mellon University. Later, she moved to Hilton Head Island, S.C., where she owned The Red Piano Gallery for 15 years, formed intimate friendships with the artists of the area and developed her own eclectic collection of folk, outsider and visionary art.

Today, in addition to creating her own monotypes, paintings and drawings, LaRoche is recognized as an authority on Southern folk art. She has lectured on the subject everywhere from New York University to the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Ga., and written a book about Southern folk artist Sam Doyle.

LaRoche regularly loans her collections to museum exhibitions. ---------------

How I Started Collecting:

“Perhaps my susceptibility to collecting is due to the emotional, physical and intellectual environment of how I was raised; or perhaps it is some genetic encoding. My parents grew up in Georgia during the Depression era. My mother was born in North Georgia and raised in Atlanta. She inherited and passed along a sentimental attachment to family history and a duty to collect any object that had been previously saved or could be used at a later date. My father was born in the Okefenokee swamplands and raised in Savannah. He had an artist’s eye but made his living in the steel and chemical industry.

“My parents bought their first original painting (a still life) in Greenwich Village during the 1960s. During numerous business trips to New York my father developed a friendship with Erwin Barrie, an art dealer, painter and director of the Grand Central Art Galleries for more than 50 years.” ----------------

My First Acquisition:

“Apart from my parents, I developed a keen interest in African American art. [As a result], I was introduced to the folk artist and visual historian Sam Doyle. His outdoor art gallery focused on the history of St. Helena Island and portraits of its people. This first meeting with Sam Doyle had great visual and emotional impact on me, resulting in me later that night dreaming of his artwork. The next day I visited Mr. Doyle again and asked to purchase the painting from my dream. It was a painting of a bad cat named Hitler and a local root doctor named Dr. Buz. The prices for his work were labeled between $100 and $500. Today at auction they bring between $5,500 and $40,000.” ----------------

My Most Recent Acquisitions:

“My most recent acquisition was a portrait of a young boy I believe to be done by a student of Robert Henri or John Sloan.” ---------------

Favorite Items in My Collection:

“My parent’s collection that I inherited holds many favorites. Two are Men Are Square by Gerrit Beneker and Panther Hollow by Edward Redfield. In my illustration collection, the first piece I bought was by Coby Whitmore, entitled A Red Headed Woman Can Always Get A Man But Can A Man Always Get A Red Haired Woman? These works have brought value to my life through beauty, humor, a sense of purpose, long-lived friendships and some financial gains.” ---------------

Advice for Beginning Collectors:

“A new collector needs to become familiar with their art community and meet other collectors and artists. The Internet is also a great resource. It is not necessary to spend vast amounts of money for good art.

“And once you start building your collection, share it with your community. I offer my collections to be available to the public. I have personally moved and installed dozens of exhibitions both locally and nationally in schools, libraries, cultural centers, museums and art fairs.”