David Butler

David Butler, Self-taught Outsider Artist ,born in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, 1898,  began creating art after a physical disablement. Butler created his brightly colored, sometimes wind-driven assemblages to "beautify his yard" by cutting out tin pieces and using chisels to form elaborate whirligigs and functional windscreens. Disappointed that the flowers he planted in his gardens disappeared during the winter months, Butler began to fashion his brightly painted tin constructions and larger wood assemblages, so he could " always look out my window and see pretty things."  His works are bold and colorful though Butler himself was a shy and reserved man.  Roosters with tin wings and cut-out feathers, mermaids, and other animals "protected his house from evil."  In later years he moved from his environment, which had slowly been stripped of its decorations by collectors and vandals, into a small project apartment.  He continued to hammer out his tin work for several years, usually while his grandchildren or neighbor children looked-on until he moved into a nursing home and soon after passed away.