Southern Folk Art

AMERICAN VERNACULAR ART This group of artists have spent their lives in the American South. The majority are black and their works have been included in numerous national and international exhibitions, at a wide varitety of galleries and museums over the last 20 years. Their art has been created free of the pretentiousness that often surrounds the art world, it's contemporary-isms and historical past. These Southern Folk Artists create art for the same variety of reasons that most artists do: to convey an idea/ feeling...”...to make some thing simple, fun, beautiful, powerful, for catharsis, to share images of the way life used to be... to preach the “word”, because it feels good, etc... and in the process: painting after painting.., year after year.., a visual language evolves, that is: singular, rich and as pleasing to experience as the artists are themselves. Jimmy Lee began mixing honey with mud and painting on trees when he was 3 years old.. he's 90 now and still using the mud. Mose worked in a Montgomery Furniture store until a terrible accident crushed his ankles; his boss had taken up painting and suggested that he give it a try... “Big Al”, 5'4” tall, the New Orleans Shoe Shiner, began making signs to advertise his business down on Jackson Square in the French Quarter.. Bernice went back to get her high school diploma when she was 52, she saw some art at museum field trips and was inspired to paint her memories of the way life use to be, good and bad, in her home state of Alabama. R.A. Miller is an 88 year old preacher at Free Will Baptist Church in Georgia, living on the land where he was born ...sitll cranking out his whirly gigs, tin cut outs and drawings... preaching the word of God... The artist's lives, the stories, the art, all rich and uniquely American.

Bernice Sims	Big Al Taplet	Howard Finster
Jack Savitsky	James "Buddy" Snipes	Jimmy Lee Sudduth
John Henry Toney	Knox Wilkinson Jr.	Missionary Mary Proctor
Mose Tolliver	Paco Felici	Prophet Royal Robertson
Purvis Young	R.A. Miller	S. L. Jones
Thornton Dial Sr.	Tubby Brown	Willam Thomas Thompson
Wille Jinks