BY his own description Laddy Sartin “had an adventurous youth.” Born in the Mississippi Delta region Sartin left “Ole Miss” University after two years and hitchhiked across the country with a buddy … several times. Through the years he worked at many jobs - from set design in New York to dishwasher in LA.

From his travels Sartin met many “interestin’ people” the likes of whom include Patrick Swazye, James Harold Jennings the notable Outsider Artists and others. Sartin mentions these, not to name-drop, but to color his stories as any great Southern yarn-teller would. And Sartin can tell a story. He loves to write and has had a play produced in NYC and is working on another. But mostly he loves to paint.

Sartin “electrifies” each of his pieces by obsessively painting dots and dashes of bright colors around his Crows, the Gooney Birds (odd cousins to the crows) and barnyard critters. His affection for animals, which shows in this work, developed from growing up on his “Granny and Grand Daddy’s” farm. And his affinity for crows comes from the time when he was “messin’ with them” in the woods. As he describes the scene: “I could make a certain crow caw and I would hide in the woods and caw them in… and they would come. But they couldn’t find me and they didn’t like that. One day I didn’t hide so well and they found me. They cawed in all their friends and soon I was surrounded by a hundred crows, maybe two. From then on crows just come to me and we talk.”

Sartin has a story like this about all his pieces. If you ask him about the Family of Goony Birds, elongated crow-like birds that he’s named after friends and relations he’ll tell you all about the person he painted it after. And he swears that he saw a rooster perched on top of a watermelon, like in “Too Sweet to Eat” trying to peck his way in. His titles like “Love Shield from Planet 49” play off his paintings and make us smile, as this type of art is intended to do.

Of special note is the wonderful sculpture, “Electrified Crow”, which personifies Sartin’s style. The work vibrates and emanates an energy. Sartin says about his work – “You pick up the energy and it inspires you to create. That’s what e-lectrifyin’ is all about – the creative energy.”

Sartin counted both James Harold Jennings and another famous Outsider artist, Howard Finster as friends and is proud to carry on the tradition. Sartin lives and works in South Carolina with his wife, Anna and their artist daughter, Heather.