Frank Calloway

1915-2014 · Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA

He claimed to be 112 years old, drew every day at a Tuscaloosa nursing facility, and unrolled the Old South from memory on scrolls up to sixty feet long.

The life

Calloway was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1915, though he always insisted on 1896, and gerontologists had to be called in to settle it. He spent his working life in farm labour, logging and road building. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1952, he was committed to Bryce Hospital and lived in the care of the Alabama Department of Mental Health for the rest of his long life, latterly at the Alice M. Kidd Nursing Facility. An art class in the 1980s set him drawing prolifically, and in 2008 the American Visionary Art Museum exhibited him and the newspapers came calling. He died in 2014, aged 99.

The work

Crayon, pen and marker on rolls of butcher paper, 24 or 36 inches tall and anywhere from eight to over sixty feet long: farms, buildings, trains and trucks from the rural Alabama of his youth, drawn in bright, steady bands. Asked about the work, he said simply, I do my best.

Why we love them

A man the world filed away in 1952 spent his tenth decade producing art by the yard. The scrolls do not end so much as pause.

Go deeper

• Frank Calloway at the Outsider Art Fair
• Frank Calloway on Wikipedia
• 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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