Sylvia Thornell Corban was born and grew up in Warren County just south of Vicksburg, Mississippi. She studied art at Hinds Junior College under Professor Louis Walsh, who instilled in her a life-long love of art and knowledge of studio technique. Sylvia earned a F.F.A. from the University of Southern Mississippi, and then spent nine years teaching art in public schools. Feeling the need to develop further as an artist, she gave up teaching to devote more time to painting. Her highly realistic paintings, rendered exclusively in watercolor, are grounded in her close observation of, and deep love for, her Gulf Coast home. She vividly captures on paper the rhythms, scenes and specific details of that unique region which stretches from the bayous of Louisiana across Mississippi to southern Alabama. In 1992, Michel Roux of Absolut Vodka selected one artist from each state to participate in a nationwide program featured in USA Today. Sylvia was commissioned as the Mississippi artist to create a work depicting a vision of her home state. As she puts it, "My paintings portray the essence of the South. They evoke feelings of deja vu, and often a touch of nostalgia. In the fall of 2000, she met and partnered with Denny Knight. Denny, a native of Louisiana brought a new direction for Sylvia's artwork. His expertise in printing fabric and creating functional products allowed Sylvia's artwork to come off of the walls and into different parts of people's lives that her artwork had currently not been able to reach. Together they have created a complete line of functional art items that extend from the garden, to the bath and into the kitchen.