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MR. HOOPER

Mr. (Tim) Hooper is an outsider artist from Tennessee, born in 1969. He has become well known for his portraits of musicians, his use of color and his unique sense of humor. Mr. Hooper attributes his artistic ability to his fascination with underground comics when he was a teenager, particularly the work of Robert Crumb. From age 16 to just about three years ago, Mr. Hooper aspired to write, draw and publish cartoon strips. Utterly frustrated with his prospects in the cartooning industry, Mr. Hooper gave painting a try. Before 1998 he had done only a couple of works in color and had never used a paintbrush to make art. He has developed his distinctive rendering style relatively quickly and become a highly collected outsider artist.

In his own words:
I taught myself to draw, from the time I could hold a crayon, I guess. As far back as I can remember I drew things--on the wall of my closet in purple crayon. I use to sit on the floor when I was about three or four and try to draw comics out of the Sunday paper. I couldn’t read or write or nothing, but I would pretend that I was writing words in the bubbles over the people’s heads. I used to make up my own coloring books too. I had a wild imagination. I guess I still do. But when I was a teenager and saw Robert Crumb’s stuff, well, a light went off in my head. I grabbed up all of that stuff that I could to the point my folks thought I was messed up in the head. Some of that stuff is pretty twisted. But I was interested in the images. I didn’t find the writing all that good, but the images blow me away. I always tell people that Robert Crumb taught me to draw.

I don’t really think of myself as a folk artist. I still see what I am doing as cartoons really. I like the idea of an outsider, but I don’t know about the legality of the term. I don’t really get into all these lines being drawn. I will tell you that if you live in the South and make images the way that I do then people say ‘hey, that there is folk art!’

I love old time music. Blues, bluegrass, rock-a-billy, country or folk –man—that is like my blood. I guess because I have no musical ability other than a little harmonica playing, I paint the music I love so much. It is like being with these old dead musicians when I paint them. I think about what they did and speculate on what they thought. Sometimes late at night when I am painting, it’s like setting with ghosts. I like that. Spooky!