I love cats.  The white cat is Sidney, a cat who lived to be nearly twenty years old. The black cat is Max, named after artist Maxfield Parrish. The gray tabby is Zoe. All are gone now but still live in my heart.

This is Sidney

This is Oscar:

This is a leather carving I did of deer in the woods:

This is a dyed and painted leather shield I made:

I made this hanging from leather scraps and two metal rings. I also used some green jute and other stuff I had just laying around:

This   is   a   leather   carving   I   did   some     time        ago:

This is perhaps the largest leather mask I've ever created:

One of the more morbid masks I've created from leather:







Here is a leather purse carving I created a very long time ago:

When I was a kid, I loved MAD MAGAZINE. I could barely wait each month for the next issue to be printed and distributed. I read each issue repeatedly. I remember the Dave Berg strips, the Spy Vs. Spy pages and the Mad "Fold Ins". I didn't really know it at the time, but the name of the person whose are I loved the most was artist Basil Wolverton. I really didn't know who he was or anything about him until the internet rolled around and made all information anywhere accessible to everyone, but I know he and MAD were great influences on me when I was younger. I never could get adults or even other kids my age to "understand" why the art was so good. Most people were of the "a child could do that" or "that's ugly" school of thought when I showed them the art I loved so much. I also didn't realize it at the time, but Wolverton art was a bit like Rat Fink, another art icon I worshiped as a child and teen. Art like Wolverton's can't be understood by intellectual elites or art school snobs, it can only be comprehended by those intuitive individuals capable of true art vision.


In the early ninety's, I attended the art school Arrowmont in Gatlinburg Tennessee and when I left to return home, I stopped  in a  convenience  store and discovered I had a flat tire. Having no jack and a fully loaded van, I called AAA to change the tire. Since I had to wait a while, I asked the clerk if I could "hang around" and I was given permission to read the magazines for sale while waiting. At the time I'd never seen a Tattoo magazine before (these days they are everywhere) and I spotted one titled "Tattoo Review #2". It peaked my interest and I opened it up and stumbled onto an artist I'd never heard of, Jeff Gaither. While looking at the art he created it was if I was having my stomach ripped out and then shoved back down my throat. It was only the second time I'd ever experienced a visceral reaction to art (the first was when seeing a certain painting in the Dali Museum in Florida). I was flabbergasted and I purchased the magazine. This was the first time and only time in my life I have been moved to write an artist, and when I wrote Gaither to tell him how much I liked his stuff, I ended up with two art works by him, which I still have today. Gaither is not for everyone. He calls his creations " Art For the Criminally Insane. He's not joking.  What I didn't put together at the time was how much Wolverton and Gaither seem alike, but Gaither is much more hard core. It's no wonder I freaked out when I first saw art by Gaither.

These are paintings I've done over the years, all have been sold and these images are scanned photographs. I don't remember the dimensions, but I do remember the names. All are acrylic on canvas or cloth.






                                                     

This is a chain and pendant I made in the mid nineties that I still have in my possession. The chain was made link by link and it took me three days to compete just the chain. The pendant is formed brass etched with acid.

 

These are acid etched brass bracelets I made some time ago, both were sold:

These are sterling silver etched cuffs I made:

These are leather masks I've made in the past:

This is a story I wrote for the magazine Fifteen501 about world famous folk artist, Clyde Jones:



CLYDE JONES
Chatham County's Critter Artist Extraordinaire

Written by L. Haywood Coffey
Photography by Gregory Georges

It's not every day the most famous ballet dancer in the world pulls up in his limo in front of your house to chat and look around, but that's exactly what happened when Mikhail Baryshnikov drove into the tiny town of Bynum to check out the artistic creations of folk artist Clyde Jones.

It's not unusual for people to drive up for a view of the “Critters” that inhabit the Jones estate, but it is unusual for one so well known to arrive, and it was probably more unusual when the driver of Barishnikov's limo asked Jones about his famous passenger: “Do you know how famous that man is?” to which Jones replied, “Well if he's heard of me, and I've never heard of him, I must be more famous than him.”


FULL STORY

                               
                                  






                                          Art by L Haywood Coffey

                                                   click the above name to see an assortment of my art

I'm not really sure if others who create are have the same early influences as myself, but I suspect that is the case. However, often when I share my early influences with those "serious" artists, I'm greeted with blank stares, expressions of surprise, either real or feigned, and sometimes outright contempt. I guess it's because I never really knew much about classical art until I was well into adulthood. One of my very early infulences was a magazine all about cinematic monsters. I decided to look it up on the net and while I think it went out of business for some time, it seems it has risen from the dead. How appropriate.

                                           

                                                                            Famous Monsters of Film Land