Spring Gully Folk Art

 The Southern Folk Art of James "Squeakie" Stone

"Kneading the Bread" 

James Stone has been called "Squeakie" for as long as he can remember.

He was born in Georgetown County, South Carolina, in 1951.

When he was growing up, the family moved every few years or so because his father was a sharecropper and carpenter, and they moved where the work was. Squeakie started work at "handing" tobacco (passing the leaves on to a worker who strung it for drying) when he was just five or six years old. As he got older, he was involved in all aspects of the operation, from pulling plants, setting tobacco, hoeing, cropping. And he picked cotton. He worked in a few factories and grocery stores over the years, and then began working as a house painter about thirty years ago.

His Uncle Henry "Squirrel" Stone had been painting folk art for nearly twenty years, when he suggested to Squeakie that he try his hand at painting a picture of a church from a photograph, which was for a woman who'd commissioned it. Squeakie had always felt that there was something else that he was meant to be doing, but had never worked out what it was until that day. When he painted that first picture, he knew this was it. That day, in 2002, he became a folk artist, although he admits now that he didn't know what he was doing back then. And, as his work progresses, new elements of Impressionism are evident. What new directions lie ahead for him?

Fran Oxner, from Cuz-I-Got-To-Have-It Gallery, at Pawleys Island, SC., came to collect some of his Uncle Squirrel's work, and she saw Squeakie's paintings and promptly took those, too. It was to be another five years before Squeakie was able to give up his day job, but since 2007 he has done nothing but paint full time, and now his naive, down-home pictures are bought by collectors from as far away as England.

Squeakie lives with his family in Andrews, South Carolina, about 25 miles from Georgetown.

For galleries where Squeakie exhibits see tab above.