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Appalachian Visionaries
Ollie Cox |
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Biography - Ollie Cox
Born in 1948 to one of the few African American families in Abingdon, Virginia, Ollie Cox got an education and got out of town. After graduating from Johnson C. Smith College in Durham, NC he worked in a series of “corporate jobs”, which took him to the west coast.
But family medical issues called him back to Abingdon a decade ago. He remained alienated by the town of his birth, but hanging out with younger ‘bohemian’ artists such as Shawn Crookshank and DR Mullins, inspired him to take refuge in art. Working on recycled automobile panels, radiators, window shades, and discarded stage-sets, he painted his personal vision of a world somewhere between San Francisco and the cosmos.
In 2007 Ollie Cox's work was featured in the exhibit, "Inside the Outside", at the William King Regional Arts Center in Abingdon, Va. (April 20 - June 17, 2007). Exhibit curator Roann Barris wrote:
Ollie's work is a riotous explosion, an outburst of color, paint, and pattern.
In the spring of 2011 Ollie Cox returned to the west coast to live.
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Ollie Cox in his home. 2009
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Cosmic Landing
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil and acrylic on wood
(25" x 14"), 2002
Price on Request
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Untitled (Asteroid at the Beach)
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil on plywood
(17 3/4" x 17 3/4"), c.2005
Price on Request
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Cityscape
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil and acrylic on wood and metal
(31 1/2" x 47 1/4"), 2002
Price on Request
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Untitled (Six Red Figures)
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil on recycled steel
(18" x 47"), 2001
Price on Request
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Yes Baby
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil and acrylic on recycled plywood panel
(62" x 24"), 2002
Price on Request
"Every painting in the house was out in the open, but we came to one sort of secret room that had a closed door. 'I guess you should see this, too,' he offered, not wanting to offend my wife. 'We're all adults.' He opened the door of this mystery space, yet another room jammed with paintings, but barely bigger than a closet.
'They're having cosmic sex,' he said, pointing to the two largest figures in the room. Despite one figure's dangling penis, there was nothing that struck me as pornographic about the images. It was like looking at strange comic, or should I say, cosmic, beings from an imaginary world."
From an unpublished manuscript by Len Davidson
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Good to See You Baby
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil and acrylic on recycled plywood panel
(62" x 24"), 2002
Price on Request
"Every painting in the house was out in the open, but we came to one sort of secret room that had a closed door. 'I guess you should see this, too,' he offered, not wanting to offend my wife. 'We're all adults.' He opened the door of this mystery space, yet another room jammed with paintings, but barely bigger than a closet.
'They're having cosmic sex,' he said, pointing to the two largest figures in the room. Despite one figure's dangling penis, there was nothing that struck me as pornographic about the images. It was like looking at strange comic, or should I say, cosmic, beings from an imaginary world."
From an unpublished manuscript by Len Davidson
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Cosmic Shadowboxing
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil on recycled steel
(11 1/2" x 48 1/2"), 2002
Price on Request
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Three Cosmic Warriors
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Acrylic on cardboard
(16" x 34"), 2001
Price on Request
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Untitled (Headdress 1)
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Acrylic on cardboard
(13" x 20"), 2001
Price on Request
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Untitled (Headdress 2)
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Acrylic on cardboard
(13 1/4" x 11"), 2001
Price on Request
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Untitled (Woman with Glasses)
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Acrylic and oil on plywood
(49" x 11 1/2"), 2002
Price on Request
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Untitled (Thin Lady)
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Acrylic and oil on plywood
(23 1/2" x 6 1/4"), 2002
Price on Request
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Cityscape
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil on plastic
(11" x 23 1/2"), 2002
Price on Request
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Untitled (Hillscape)
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil on plywood
(24 1/2" x 48"), 2002
Price on Request
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Untitled (Spirit)
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil on wood slab
(26 1/2" x 10 1/4"), 2006
Price on Request
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Untitled (Meteors)
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil on plywood
(11 1/2" x 8"), 2002
Price on Request
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Untitled (Autumn)
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil on plywood
(6 1/2" x 6"), 2002
Price on Request
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Tribute to Shawn (Collaborative work)
Ollie Cox and Shawn Crookshank (Abingdon, Virginia),
Mixed media
(21 1/2" x 27"), 2007
Price on Request
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Radiator Cityscape
Ollie Cox (Abingdon, Virginia),
Oil on radiator
(18" x 32"), 2008
Price on Request
"Judy and I knew Ollie's house as soon as we saw it. The front had a scattering of junk, and the enclosed back yard was dense with every kind of trash imaginable--old road signs, pieces of wood, metal from cars, unrecognizable stuff. But inside was mind boggling. When he showed us around, every room was cluttered with his art work. It was screwed to walls, lying on beds, leaning against and on top of the pool table, in the kitchen, bathroom, anywhere you could put it. He had painted on discarded Hallmark card racks, the glass door of a commercial washing machine, odd pieces of wood and much more.
''When I moved back to Abingdon, I discovered that there were a lot of objects,' he explained, 'wood, metal, and all kinds of trash just laying around. And some of it I thought was pretty cool. I tried to figure out what I would try to do with this stuff cause I hate to see it go to the junk yard. When I'm riding around it could take 20 hours to get home because every 10 seconds I'm stopping to pick something up.'
'Now that radiator,' he told me years later, after he left Abingdon, 'that's a rare piece. I only painted 5 or 6 radiators. That one I painted a landscape on one side and a gas station on the other."
From an unpublished manuscript by Len Davidson
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E-Mail: indigofamily@indigoarts.com
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