Leroy Person (1907 - 1985) | Bench

North Carolina

Circa: 1978

Size: 24" x 35" x 14"

Born in 1907, Leroy Person was an African American artist from Mud Castle of Occoneechee Neck, North Carolina. Raised on sharecropped farmland, Person worked his adult life at a sawmill and retired due to work-related respiratory issues.After retirement, Person began carving into fence posts, the clapboards, and moldings of his house. With encouragement from a neighbor, he started creating freestanding sculptural works made with discarded wood that he carved and then colored with wax crayons.Person’s art is clearly an extension of the African cultural diaspora, yet his work is fully singular. It doesn’t look like anyone else’s, and no one else’s looks quite like his.