While truly starving artists are compelled to sell the art they create (or compelled to work an artless job for survival), there's another kind of artist out there, and these artists fascinate the Culture Vulture. They don't let much of anything get in the way of what they feel so strongly compelled to do, and that's to create.

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The traits these compulsive creators have in common are unique methods and imagery, and prolific output. They get going, and they don't stop until they have to.

Not by the book

The Miami-Dade public library system, under the brilliant curating of Barbara Young (no kin), brought many interesting artistic displays to the public. One in particular, Purvis Young (also no kin, b. 1943), is a self-taught artist from the blighted side of the sunny/shadowed duality that is Miami. From the 1970s on, Young was driven to paint upon anything he could find. When he had no paper, he used discarded books for sketching. These were books of several hundred pages, which Young filled with images of people, animals, buildings, spirits and angels. Now exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world (including our own Art Museum of Western Virginia -- nice art!), Young's paintings sell for hundreds to many thousands of dollars, but he didn't do it for the money. He did it because he felt he must.

Visions and revisions

Howard Finster (1917-2001, also in our museum's collection) was driven by what he felt were God-given messages. His naive art melded biblical passages, personal revelations and visions of worldly and otherworldly delights. Now his life's work is a cottage industry carried on by his family, including his "Paradise Gardens" at the Finster Folk Art Gallery in Summerville, Ga.

Right here in Roanoke, I was instantly fascinated with Carol (CJ) Phillips' work in her studio at Studios on the Square Gallery downtown. When I first saw her, Phillips was in the throes of her bird head project -- she was obsessed with creating small bird heads. Thousands of them. She did not seem to want, or be able, to stop.

"I think that when you're in a creative space, you just feel a flow," Phillips said. "There's a real compulsion to do it. There is a need to create, and it's important to, and it's got to come from inside your head, from your own creativity. Not someone else's, but your own. It's something you feel completes you."

Phillips used the bird heads in large assemblages of tarrish-textured elements. She has also altered vegetable steamers and assembled them. Her work ranges from the tarred to the painted to the glued and picket-fenced. She's an innovative artist whose compulsion to create always results in things of interest.

I admire CJ Phillips, and all the people out there who aren't just working in art, they are working out issues through their art. They live in two worlds: One that goes on within them, and, while they're in the throes of creation, a world that goes on without them.

Miriam Young is a creative director living in color in Roanoke.

Note: Some Web links provided by the Culture Vulture may contain art featuring nudity, strong political content and bizarre visions. Parental guidance is suggested. Please respect the copyrights of the owners when visiting online galleries, and obtain artists' permission before downloading any images.

Here is one of those links.

CJ Phillips’ work can be seen at Studios on the Square Gallery, 126 Campbell Ave., downtown Roanoke.