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Folk Art by JAMES SQUEAKIE STONE
JAMES "SQUEAKIE" STONE is a folk artist from South Carolina. We recently received his work with this note: "My name is James Stone, but I have been called Squeakie for as long as I can remember. I was born in Georgetown County, South Carolina in 1951. When I was growing up, we moved every few years or so because my father was a carpenter and sharecropper.
I started working at handing tobacco when I was five- or six-years-old. As I got older, it was pulling plants, setting tobacco, hoeing, cropping, and picking cotton. Later, I worked in grocery stores and in a few factories. I've been painting houses for the last thirty years or so.
I started painting pictures in 2002 when my Uncle Henry "Squirrel" Stone, who has been painting folk art for nearly 20 years, asked me to try and paint a church from a picture a woman took and asked him o paint for her. I always felt that there was something I was supposed to do but had never found out what it was. When I painted that first painting, it was like, "This is it." I just loved painting even if I didn't know what I was doing.
Later, Fran Oxner, the owner of Cuz I To Have It, a folk art gallery in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, came to take a look at my uncle's paintings. She saw mine too and got paintings from both of us.
Now I have paintings in America, oh yes, in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina and Washington, DC, The Grey Man Gallery in Pawleys Island, SC, Fin Leaf Gallery in Columbia, SC, Around Back at Rocky's Place in Dawsonville, GA, The Route of Art Gallery in Florence, Alabama and The Attic Gallery in Vicksburg, MS, and The Gallery at Bear Creek in Saluda, NC.
I now live in Andrews, SC, about 25 miles from Georgetown." |
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