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Billy Roper self-taught , outsider, folk art
Billy Roper is self-taught and has been creating art in one form are another from earliest childhood. At the age of forty-two he sold his first pieces of art. From then until now he has been a full time artist. Selling his work across the USA and beyond.
His work has been called self taught, outsider, folk art. Billy says, "It just is." Which makes as much sense as anything I guess.
This type work is very, very hard to describe and define but, when seen and especially in person. It is easy for viewers to respond to the deeply felt emotion they find.
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please visit guest book and links to other sites that have my work
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Thoughts about Billy Roper’s Work
Billy Roper’s paintings possess a disarming simplicity of colors, images, and composition. Despite their seeming lack of sophistication, these paintings compel the viewer to look beyond the unschooled style rendered in vivid colors to consider the larger truths they represent. However, as guilefully as these paintings ensnare the imagination, it is not viewing them that captivates: it is reading them. Turning the paintings over revels another landscape of the imagination, this one rendered into words. The words, like the paintings, are also filled with simple images, also arranged in unschooled and seemingly artless compositions. Yet the simplicity of the words beguiles, and the truths, perhaps even larger than those of the paintings, are rendered even more vividly.
Often Billy Roper’s painted world has patterned backgrounds, inspired by the wallpaper patterns of his grandmother’s house. The patterns of his written world are the insightful simplicity of the sayings of the many women who raised him. “A Goat’s House Fur Wool” proclaims a sketch of his, referring to his grandmother’s injunction that “You don’t go to a goat’s house to get wool.” Or do you? The ambiguity of the words matches the ambiguity of the picture. Angels shine rays onto brightly colored goats, reminiscent of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue about the golden age, in which grazing sheep are brilliantly colored, making dye and dying unnecessary. Are the goats in the sketch the kind that have been bred to grow woolly fur? The simple images of words and sketch mirror the paradoxical nature of life, suggesting that advice is not as straightforward as it first may seem.
The paradox becomes even more apparent as Billy Roper’s written world often celebrates life’s relationships. He recognizes their necessity, at one point asking, “What is the good of a fire in the soul if nobody wants to sit by the hearth[?]” And another piece, “Courtship,” proclaims, “I love courtship[;] I’d one have a week Back yonder[,] just wear a body ‘It would’ out.” This courtship draws on more than merely physical powers. In this world courtship is magical:
Courtship is the magic time. If people can’t get along then[, t]hey better forget it. Of the courtships I have been in I have done well. Really[,] courtship is what I do best. But my magic dust only last[s] a little while. Then it is like I don’t know what is next. But I think I am getting better with each try. I do send them flowers through the wind[, b]ut I guess some times they just don’t get there.
The drawing itself casts a woman into shadow and light as images of goodness and evil surround her, suggesting the multiple truths of relationships: some are unions of kindred spirits, others prisons for tormented souls. Another painting’s message warns, “Touch that other person[;] love that other person without any limits. If you can’t do that[,] leave them alone.” Another speaks about the negative potential of marriages: “This pretty much sums up most marriages. Time spent in pursuit of nothing with someone who don’t even want to go.”
Thus Billy Roper’s world also often reveals truths about being alone. For instance, on “Angel in the Candle Forest” the artist confesses:
To whoever get[s] this picture I would like to say something. First of all I am very fond of this picture[;] I like the child like simpleness of it. This little angel is shy and unsure[:] Not exactly sure of what to do next. I think we all feel that way sometimes. I know I surely do. I don’t want to even think that I have to know the answer to whatever the question is. I just want to be simple. Simple is good[,] and I think the way to be. If I don’t know I say I don’t know. Most of the Time It ain’t no problem because I really don’t know. . . . So I guess I said all that to say this[:] the little angel or this picture is of me and people like me who ain’t real sure what is next and don’t pretend. I think it is hard for us to be ourselves but I guess the more we try the easier it gets. But they is one thing for sure[:] It takes less explaining than trying to be something we are not.
Not knowing what to do next, the poet situates himself shyly and quietly in the landscape. Nevertheless, again and again words cry out boldly when the poet seems most shy, and words speak loudest when they are most quiet. One painting reveals the paradox: “Sometimes at night when everything is quieter and louder than it should be-the past comes back to haunt my thoughts.”
The past often haunts, but it leads to truths. On “Fight, Flight, and Negotiation” Billy Roper, talking about past fights, gets to what is real: “Any body who thinks they won a fight ain’t ever been in many. I would defend my wife and family. But that is another thing. But to defend my honor I don’t know about that. It seems to me that real honor does not need defending.”
Likewise, real words need no explaining. That is the simplicity and compelling nature of the truths of Billy Roper’s worlds of writing and painting. They become real to the viewer, making them something to claim. Billy Roper recognizes that value when he writes, “As surely as we live we are. It is the way of all flesh. I am sure somewhere down the road we will look back and wonder why we all want to claim this life so dearly.”
--Donna A. Gessell, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
North Georgia College & State University
Originally, a version of this appeared in the Gallery Notes for Billy Roper: My World: Exhibit of Recent Works, October 5 through November 13, 1998, Hoag Student Center Gallery, North Georgia College & State University, Dahlonega, GA 30597
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ARTIST STATEMENT
My name is Billy roper I live in pickens county Ga. my people have been here for a very long time with the Cherokee and after them. one are the other branches of my family cover anything that ever happened in this county. Parts of my family lived with the Cherokees and parts of them were Cherokees. white people and Cherokees mixed and traded cultures it was this mixture I was raised with. I went to Cherokee N. C. one time and saw the restored village there a great deal of what I saw I was raised to. after the removal a lot of Cherokees did not go they then became black Dutch and Irish. my mamas grandma was black Dutch I had no idea what that meant as a child. it always seemed strange to be Dutch little along black Dutch i had no idea what either was . I was taught who I was and where I came from for countless generations I know -----that does not make me better or worse but it does make me --me.
I have thought about it a lot and no matter how hard I think about it or how far back I remember I have no memory of a time when I did not paint, carve, etc., in one form or the other. Like so many other people before me i used what i had i painted with pokeberry mostly because they was everywhere i was i mostly just painted on me and trees but i have always painted carved etc. one time when I was about four and a half or so mama sent me to throw away some old setting hen eggs that did not hatch. well, I got all loaded up and went up the trail to the hog pen minus the hog he had recently been reincarnated and freed from this life. I had every intentions of getting rid of the eggs the only question was how. the way I decided on was to break them one at a time on the slabs of the hog pen during the time of which I discovered what a pretty design rotten egg will make on a gray hog pen and a little boy. to this day I can remember how pretty it looked and how lonely it was for a while after that as I was learning about down wind and upwind.
I learned to carve by trial and error mostly error and cutting my fingers. I got my first knife at three years old. it was not big or sharp but it was a knife I am told now days boy cannot even carry knifes to school what a shame. if they have no knife how can they make popular whistles in the spring or stick holes in oranges at Christmas time---or carve. why is it we always try to treat the effect and ignore the cause. I hear all the time what a different place the world is now, that is not so it is our concept of the world that is different. you cannot have highways and shopping centers and the natural world on the same acre. organic orange juice in a Styrofoam cut is a lie...... period. but make no mistake about it I am chief amongst sinners. I hold no secrets to life I wish I did but I don’t. I make most of the tool I use because that is how I learned to do it. I use old metal I find, rawhide, etc., but I will tell you something that epoxy glue is manna from heaven. if is was possible to do so you could glue sin to salvation with that stuff and it would hold.
A little over eight years ago a friend of mine ask me to put some paintings in a place in Dahlonega Ga. they sold I put some more they did too. a new place took some they sold to then the Atlanta gallery of archer and locke took some it went from there. mean while people were coming to the house to see me too. I did that for along time, now I deal with galleries plus I deal with people and events on my own for the rest. if I ain’t learned another thing from it all I have learned this ----talk ain’t cheap it is free. I have set the record for being discovered and come with me boy we will go places is getting a little thin. first of all I don’t want to go places I am already there.
a while back there was a display of some of my work at north GA college I was ask to speak to the students normally I would not have done it but this time I agreed. it was not the talk they expected I had no axe to grind or anybody to please. I told them the truth as far as I did know it. we meet on equal terms the questions most ask was about the making of frames and tools second what was it like to be a full time artist and is it hard my answer to that was how bad do you want it. because it will take all you got and then some. third was questions about me and art etc.
I deal with people from all over the U.S.A now they come and they call and through the galleries I have been in several shows but not a whole lot. it takes way to much time and work to have many shows. I had one lady from LA California to write me a letter she ask if I was Billy roper the artist and wanted to know where she could get some or a painting I called her back and her mama and daddy come to see me we are now good friends. for the most part this is how it works most of the time. people the world over are the same whether it is one mile off or one thousands it makes no difference the only thing is do they like what you do. then if so it is all the same. I like what I do I don’t feel like one of them much put upon long suffering artist types. it is not always easy but I don’t know of anything that is but it ain’t as hard as working in the marble quarries with your pants legs freezing half way up your leg or working on some old house until your hands get so cold they won't work no more and ain’t no easier in the summer.
a few years ago I tried to work at a real job it did not work finally one day as I was standing there looking out the windows and being miserable I wrote this..........
I cannot see the rainbows said the misery to the sane
I cannot see the rainbows I cannot hear the rain
the little bird is quieter now the bars are getting small
but freedom to a blue bird is no bars at all........
a little while later I quit that job forever------------I hope. I cannot say for sure because I have finally learned life is like the bible says the crooked made along side the straight.
Billy roper
Billy Roper self taught outsider folk art
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Artist Billy Roper
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Billy Roper
Send E-Mail to: broper3@aol.com
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