The Georgia Red Mud Painter

Here's a little pic of The Georgia Red Mud painter in his house studio in Georgia. On our way to Key West, Josh and I stopped for coffee and to chat about the state of the folk art world. Mostly we just stopped to chew the fat and gossip.

I almost tripped over these stacks of paintings when I walked into his studio. So many nice pieces, featuring the ever-popular roosters and horses and catfeesh, all full of that Georgia red clay mud. He paints and scratches out his art images on everything from paper to board to Winn-Dixie grocery bags. It is interesting to me also that The Georgia Red Mud Painter uses the color black to paint all of his characters, no matter what their actual race. In many of his works, I see an attempt to blur the boundaries of race and to tie men together as humans existing in a landscape. He has made for his icons things such as snakes, catfish, roosters, and horses: symbols laden with significant historical and religious context.

Heres a poem I wrote about The Georgia Red Mud Painter, a man full of heart and Southern tales:

hunkered down in his bunker down in Georgia
slaving over portraits of slaves in cornfields
rich history ties his thoughts to dying folklore
when Jake-leg liquor bent the knees and innocent bodies bent the trees;
to be southern is to learn to churn the wrongs of history into the butter of unforgetfulness.
best friends with those whose grandfolks eyes saw civil war’s un-chivalry
a man whose art, tall tales impart , with kindest heart thrown to it
indebted to the mud that coats his brushes as hes thought to use it,
whose work says “add clean clear water to Georia dirt and it just comes out as Georgia mud”
and so a tool, no need for school, is this to his best uses
to tell the stories of faded glory, and all its southern abuses

To purchase works by The Georgia Red Mud painter, visit his Ebay store or see his work in Chicago at the April American Ruralist Movement exhibition at Chicago City Arts Gallery.