William Hawkins

1895-1990 · Columbus, Ohio, USA

He painted his name and full birthdate around the border of every picture, a one-man brand decades before the art world had a word for it. It took until he was 87 to catch on.

The life

Hawkins was born on 27 July 1895 in rural Kentucky and raised by his grandmother on the family farm, which stocked his memory with the animals he would paint all his life. He moved to Columbus, Ohio, in 1916 and worked every job the city offered, driving trucks among much else. He drew and sold pictures from the 1930s, but only began painting in earnest in the mid to late 1970s, in his eighties, and recognition finally arrived with an exhibition in 1982. He painted, prolifically and at full volume, until his death in Columbus in 1990.

The work

Enamel and semi-gloss house paint, often salvaged from a hardware store’s throwaways, applied with a single blunt brush to masonite: Columbus landmarks and bridges, beasts remembered and imagined, worked from a personal archive of clippings and sometimes collaged. Around each image runs the painted border carrying his printed signature and birthdate. His work is held by the American Folk Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Why we love them

Total confidence, zero permission. He signed like a monument mason because he knew, decades early, that the work would last.

Go deeper

• William Hawkins at the Outsider Art Fair
• William Hawkins 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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