Lowell Davis
Lowell Davis, an honest and unassuming man, is an artist who has accomplished a great deal during his career. He is most famous for his detailed porcelain sculptures of domesticated farm animals. He is known not only all over the United States, but internationally. He was born and raised in the town of Red Oak, near Carthage, Missouri. Besides being a famous artist, he also redesigned and rebuilt Red Oak, now known as Red Oak II, close to his farm in Carthage, Missouri.
Growing up in this area definitely influenced my art work. Everything that I’ve done in my life, and everything that I’ve known, I’ve put into my art. That’s what your art is, what your life is. So it [life] had powerful influence on me. I don’t know of any other outside influences involved in my art work other than right here.
It was an era and an area where neighbors helped neighbors. We were poor, but we didn’t know it. I didn’t know I was poor until I moved to Carthage in the fifth grade and they told me I was poor. Our mom made our clothes. We had a Jersey cow and a garden. It was a self-sufficient time period. I was raised in the back of the old general store. That’s kind of where I learned how to whittle, carve, and paint. The old-timers would come in and whittle, tell yarns, and set around the pot-bellied stove in the winter, or on the front porch in the summer time. I used to be fascinated by these characters and I’d say, "I don’t ever want to grow old, I just want to turn into a character."
All of my relatives were farmers, so they didn’t really understand the art part. They didn’t discourage me in any way, they just didn’t know how to help me. All my relatives, on both sides of my family, were from Red Oak. In fact, the very first pioneer who put the plow in was my great-great-grandfather. At one time I had five sets of grandparents, great-grand parents, and aunts and uncles living in Red Oak. Practically the entire town was made up of relatives.
I had no exposure to art except in the general store. We used to get the Saturday Evening Post. I just couldn’t wait for it to come in so that I could see all the illustrations and Norman Rockwell covers. He [Norman Rockwell] was my hero. I guess it was the story telling part of his art that always impressed me. I like to tell a story somehow. It might be very subtle, but everything has a story in my paintings. I don’t just paint a landscape without saying something.
I must have a lot of influence from Norman Rockwell because a lot of people relate to me as the Norman Rockwell of rural art. I don’t know how they put it together because I deal with animals and he dealt with people, but it must show up somewhere.
I have two other mentors. Thomas Hart Benton was a Missouri artist. He painted the mural in the capitol at Jefferson City. He was a very famous artist. The other was a western artist called Charlie Russell. He was the grandfather of western art. He always impressed me. I studied him and all of his works, books, and writings. I don’t know of any artists that show up in my work; yet, the basics of my work is all them.
I knew that I wanted to be an artist when I dumped out my first box of Crayolas and started scribbling. I thought, "Wow! This is it. This is what I want to be." In fact, my mother said I painted my first mural when I was about two years old--she just moved my crib around the room. That’s all I ever wanted to be. My head is full of ideas. I never turn a television or a radio on. Your mind is kind of like a muscle. If you don’t exercise muscles, they go soft on you. When you watch television, it [tv] just turns it [your mind] blank. I was raised with reading, radio, and my imagination. I knew exactly what people looked like. I knew where they were. I knew what the background was. It was always visual. I always did it [art] as a kid. I used to sit down with paper and pencil constantly. I knew that I wanted to be an artist because I can remember all of the prints, and paintings in all my aunts’ and grandmother’s houses. I can’t remember anything else in their houses, but I can remember the prints that were hanging on the walls. I have never had another job. I knew when I was a kid that I didn’t want to work for a living, so I decided to be an artist.
I went to Carthage High School. I failed art and English my sophomore year. I quit and joined the Air Force. When I got out of the Air Force, I went back to what was called Pittsburg State, at the time, for a year. Then I went to Joplin Junior College, which is now MSSC. I took some art courses, but not really anything that was in painting. They were more or less philosophies, lettering, things like that.
The only art studies that I’ve done is artists that used to impress me in my career. They were doing something that I wanted to know. I would usually go down to their house, knock on their door, and camp out until they would let me in and tell me what I wanted to know-- teach me to paint a sky, landscape, trees or something. That is kind of what I do. If a young artist came to me and needed to know something, I’m always willing to, what little knowledge or ability I have, teach them or show them. I’m paying the artists back that helped me out.
Most young people that grow up in this area feel like they have to move to the big cities to make it. I was working here in the printing companies, and I had my own little art studio. My success was probably because I just wasn’t a good enough salesman at the time to sell my work. I had a job offer to move to the big city, and that’s what I did. The terrible thing about doing that is you get locked into them, and you can’t get back out. Big cities are a vacuum that suck all the natural resources, our children, everything up. You can’t get out of them. I spent thirteen years trying to figure how to get out of it after I got into it.
I was an art director for an advertising agency in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. At the same time, I was also a wildlife artist. I became very successful and quit my job at the advertising agency. Then I got a contract with a German company called Kaiser Porcelain Company. I hit pretty good down there. Then I went through a divorce and lost everything. I came back here and bought this old, fallen down farm. That’s where I always wanted to be. I just sat at the ad agency and stared out the window thinking, "Yeah, I’ve got to get back out of here. Get to Missouri, and get me a farm." Then one day I heard a rooster crow, after thirteen years, and I knew I had to go. That’s when I packed up and finally made the step. I bought this old, fallen down farm and seventeen roosters, and turned them loose. Every morning since I’ve been woke up by the roosters crowing.
When I moved back, I was still doing all wildlife [art]. I got remarried. Needless to say, I was broke again. My wife’s dad gave us an old Dodge car, and I had an old tent trailer that my dad gave me. That’s what we traveled in. We went all over the country doing art shows. I’d paint and sculpture in parks during the week. Then I would come back here and fix up a building because all of the buildings were falling apart. I’d save enough money to come back and fix up a chicken house, hog house, or a sheep pen. When I did that, I would then go get the animals that would go with the house I was building. After I got quite a few animals, I started sculpting and painting them. But I thought, "Who would ever buy a painting of a cow, or a sculpture of a pig?" But I did it anyway because there was nothing on the market like it in any form. I took them to a show along with my wildlife paintings and everybody was over at my domestic animal paintings, looking at them and, "ohing" and "awing." I told my wife, "I think I’ve hit something here." I worked for about four or five months on a farm related line and took it to the biggest distributor in the United States, and they loved them. We then took them to Scotland and had them cast, and hand painted. That’s when the success story came in. They were sold in about two thousand gift shops throughout the United States. They would have shows, like a writer at a book show, people would go in a certain gift shop and buy my figurines. Some people would have a big collection. They wanted to meet the artist and have some of their figurines signed. So, for the most of fifteen years, I just traveled around and did my shows.
I didn’t like traveling. I wanted to be here. It was okay while I was doing it, but it really wore on me. They would send me first class because whenever I went to a show they made a lot of money. Even in the best hotel rooms, first class flights, and the finest restaurants, it [traveling] just gets to you. I started hating the airports and airplanes. I’m not scared of them, I just hate them. So I bought that old motor home (across the street) and traveled in that for several years. I’ve been to every state but two in it going to my shows.
I didn’t know what to do with all of the money that I was making. I heard a quote, by Thomas Hart Benton that said something about someone asking how you enjoy your life of your art career. He said, "Well, if you can make it about the first forty years, then it’s great." So it’s kind of like an overnight/forty year success story.
A lot of people, who had spent half or most of their savings account on my figurines and paintings, wanted to see the animals and the farm. There were fifteen thousand people that belonged to what they called the Lowell Davis farm club. So, every year we invited all those fifteen thousand people to come to the farm. They loved to come here and see the animals. If I would have been doing those farm animals and living in suburban Philadelphia, it wouldn’t have gone over. It would’ve just been a pig, it would’ve just been a chicken. I think that was the reason for my success.
I don’t think I could’ve made it if I’d lived in a big city. I would’ve never made the success because [here] all my animals were real. I lived on a real place, a real farm. There’s nothing real in anyone’s life anymore. All the characters in our kid’s lives are computer drawn or fictitious. They aren’t real. I found that one of my biggest reasons for my success is that all the [other] figurines are just figurines of a deer or an angel, something like that, but nothing real.
I think the animals were the magic of my work. I have a dog that paid for this entire farm. Just an old dog that I bought for a dollar at a pound. She had mange and blisters all over. They were going to destroy her that afternoon. I said, "I’ll take that one." She went to all my shows with me. I used her in four figurines and eleven plates. The very first figurine I did was the dog sitting by the mailbox. It was an instant hit. She made me tons of money. I still give her a little credit for paying for the farm. In fact, that’s why I put a paw print on my work.
You have to live out your art work. That’s what you should be painting; that’s what you should be sculpting. Your environment, your life, whatever it is--that’s what art is. It’s hard for a young person to make a statement, they haven’t lived life. I think [what] I’m doing now is putting all the elements of my life, all the different art that I’ve done [into my work]. I was a cartoonist for years. I used to try to fight it out of my paintings. Every time I’d do a person, or anything, it would kind of turn into a cartoon. A cartoon doesn’t only mean it’s funny, it means an exaggeration: exaggeration of an expression, a gesture, a color, or a mood. I found my paintings had all of those cartoon elements in them. Exaggeration all the way through from colors to compositions. I used to fight it, but now I’m trying to put in all those elements of my life into my art, whether it’s in junk, painting, or sculpting.
The advice I’d tell someone wanting to be an artist: Don’t move off to a big city. That’s the worst thing they could do. Figure it out here. It seems like when you get college-educated the only thing you can to do is move to the big city. I have two sons that are educated and they’re in the cities. I have three daughters that are not educated, except high school, and they’re making it just fine here. One of my daughters is an artist. It’s kind of a sink or swim thing. I think you would improve a lot more if you stayed here than you would in a big city. I have another daughter who is a photographer, and doing quite well. My other daughter is a home care nurse. I’m very proud of all of them. But you don’t have to move off.
Leave fame and fortune out of your life. It’s nothing but misery. It’s nothing but misery for me, and nothing but misery for my family. I wouldn’t have been able to do all that I’ve done in my life without some of the fortune that I’ve made, but I could’ve lived without it for the pain that the other part [fame] has brought in to it.
One advantage of living in this area is that there’s not as much competition. I mean, if I was to move to California, any very desirable place, your competition is much harder. I like this area because it’s undesirable to people. What makes this place desirable to me, is that it is undesirable to other people. I could move anywhere I want to, but I can think of nowhere else in this world I’d want to be.
I am still painting. I started one this morning. I don’t paint that often, I’m more into making signs. I really don’t have much of a statement to make in my paintings. I feel like anything that I do, I really want to make a statement. I don’t want to be painting a picture just to sell it. I don’t want to do that anymore. I did that raising five kids. If I paint now, it’s strictly because I want to paint. Right now my signs and my junk sculptures are my big thing. I love junk sculptures. Of course, that’s probably my medium. Most of my medium is made up of something somebody threw away. The entire area of Red Oak is made up of what somebody else threw away. I’d find old doors, windows, stones, pieces of steel. Whatever I scavenged up I would bring home, and that was my art material. That’s what I’m continuing to do. Except I’m not going to do it with buildings anymore. It gets kind of expensive, plus the upkeep. What I’m going through right now, if I can get the financing, is trying to turn Red Oak into a nonprofit organization. The fun for me was building it, and now it’s just work. If I do that, then I will do a lot of junk sculptures.
In sculpting, my prized piece of work is the "Flying Crap-duster." But if you said, "Lowell, what is your masterpiece?" I would say "Red Oak." Red Oak wasn’t ever meant to be a commercial venture. It was just a big blank canvas to me. So, all the buildings and all the things over there are art. People would come out to Red Oak with their kids and say, "Where’s the water slides?"
I’d say, "No, this is not the right place. If you want to come over and walk around, and think of it as an art form, then I think you’d enjoy it more."
Red Oak II is a great local tourist attraction full of historical sites. From Pittsburg, Kansas to Red Oak II take Fourth Street, East out of Pittsburg and continue on 126 Highway. At the junction of 126 and Highway 43 turn South, and travel to 96 Highway. Turn East, and go through Carthage. Approximately 2 miles out of town, turn North at the metal-sculpture "Red Oak II." Follow the signs the rest of the way. Upon arrival you will travel back in time to a little town called Red Oak, Missouri.
From an interview conducted on October 11, 2000.
This oral history was researched and prepared by Sarah Grotheer, Fall 2000.
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