J.J. Cromer

b. 1967 · Princeton, West Virginia, USA

A librarian who started doodling again after his wedding and never stopped: a quarter century on, the hobby is a universe of teeming, tendrilled worlds.

The life

Cromer was born in 1967 in Princeton, West Virginia, to two science teachers, and grew up in rural Tazewell County, Virginia. A seventh-grade teacher’s discouragement put him off art for years, so he went the book route instead: degrees in history, English and library science, and a job as a public librarian, where he met his wife Mary. Only after marrying did he pick up a pen again, and the renewed hobby quickly became an obsession. He now works full-time on the couple’s farm, drawing daily.

The work

Mixed media on paper and illustration board: ink, coloured pencil, graphite and collage packed into dense, organic compositions where figures, plants and machines grow into one another. Beneath the pattern sit his preoccupations, war, racism, technology, class and the environment. His work is held by the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and Intuit in Chicago.

Why we love them

Proof the door out of art is never locked from the outside. One discouraging teacher cost the world twenty years of drawings; we begrudge her every one.

Go deeper

• J.J. Cromer at the Outsider Art Fair
• American Visionary Art Museum
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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