Norbert Kox (August 6, 1945 – December 29. 2018) was an American

outsider artist Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates ...

whose paintings display an unusual approach to religious iconography.

Life

Norbert Kox was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1945. While a member of the Outlaws biker gang, Kox began working on custom bikes and cars, soon progressing to painting on other items, creating artworks from rubbish or salvaged objects. Leaving the biker gang was an emotional struggle, which Kox only achieved through immersing himself in religion. Kox soon found that he disbelieved the conventional teachings of

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

, preferring his own interpretations. He joined the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

and, with the help of art instruction books, began painting. Between 1975 and 1985, Kox went through a period of religious isolation, living as a hermit in the wilderness of his personal outdoor chapel known as "Gospel Road". On his return to Green Bay, he continued to work on his apocalyptic, spiritual paintings.

Work

Kox's pictures are religious visions of the battle between good and evil, detailing spiritual scripts and examining the worship of various false icons. He organised his compositions with pencil then employed a complex layering technique, depositing layers of vivid oils and watercolors. The final glazing of his paintings, combined with the strongly contrasted hues he used, endowed each of these works with brilliant and translucent qualities.

Bibliography

* Raw Vision No. 14, 1996. * Raw Vision No. 65, 2008. * Religious Visionaries, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 1991. * The End is Near!: Visions of Apocalypse, Millennium and Utopia. American Visionary Art Museum, 1998.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kox, Norbert 1945 births 2018 deaths Outsider artists Writers from Green Bay, Wisconsin Artists from Wisconsin Military personnel from Wisconsin