Thornton Dial, Sr., aka Buck, is about the farthest thing from a fancy art gallery insider.

Having only attended school through the 3rd grade, he can barely read or write and as far as knowing the art world hot shots, his knowledge is about nil. In fact, he admits that he has never seen some of the most renowned artists in history, such as Jackson Pollock. Well, maybe he saw his work once, but just couldn't read the museum label. Either way, this speaks to the kind of character Thornton Dial is - a simple country boy from Alabama.

Thornton was born in a cornfield in rural Alabama. With no dad and eleven other siblings to contend with, childhood was not easy for Dial. With no money for toys, Dial learned from a young age how to utilize his dexterous hands to make his own toys. He never stopped making obscure objects out of found goods till the day he died. In fact he made so many sculptural objects over the years that he would bury his sculptures in the ground. No joke, when he needed more scraps for new pieces he would just dig up his old ones and reuse the materials! Given that his pieces have been known to sell for six figures, I would say digging around on his property would be like the ultimate treasure hunt.

Before Thornton gained recognition in the arts, he was a hard working man - a real salt of the earth type. His youth was spent milking cows, picking cotton, and throwing hay bales. In fact, he got his start working in the fields at the ripe age of six. I tell you this guy had some serious work ethic. As he grew older, most of his life was spent working as a machinist in a railcar factory.

It wasn’t until he was almost sixty that the art world caught wind of Mr. Dial. Dial did not gain art world recognition all on his own. A man by the name of Bill Arnett once came to his home and informed Dial that his tinkering and random assemblages of scraps where indeed art, which was total news to Dial. He had no idea he was an artist! From that moment, Arnett was hell bent on making Dial’s creations part of the art historical cannon. Arnett bankrolled Dial’s life so that he could fulfill his destiny of becoming an artist. Some naysayers think Arnett was exploiting Dial, but hey, he received recognition in the arts, got $2,000 a month and a nine-bedroom house out of it. Exploitation or not, that sounds like a fair trade to me.

Thornton tells the tragic tale of the African American experience. Overtones of civil rights demonstrations, sharecroppers, and segregation saturate his work. Thornton is generally considered to be an “outsider artist.” While that may sound like a bit of a dis, this term just means that the artist has no formal training, yet is killing it in the art world. They are so far out of the mainstream that the art world is gravitating towards them. It's like what a hipster used to be. Presumably Dial had no conception of all this. Rather than dealing with all the hoo-ha of the art world, Dial stuck to what he did best throughout his entire career: living simply on the land and making art that tells the story of his African American roots and his humble life.