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DeGraff's folk art includes a variety of subject matters, from village scenes to landscapes to fishing.
DeGraff has given away more than 1,000 drawings.
Joe DeGraff started drawing after a head injury. He gives his art to customers at the Lake Anna convenience site where he works. |
By CATHY DYSON
A blow to the head turned Joe DeGraff into an artist.
The Caroline County man was mugged in 1995 at a campground where he and his family stayed regularly. He never saw who hit him at the base of the skull with something hefty--maybe a two-by-four--and emptied his wallet.
His neck swelled up like a football, and his brain had a bruise the size of a silver dollar. For a year, DeGraff, now 69, couldn't remember events that just happened, and he had a hard time writing his name.
He'd always been a doodler, but couldn't draw a straight line--or an image anyone would recognize--to save his life.
As he practiced his signature, his doodles started to go in directions they'd never been.
DeGraff sketched a barn and a little house, "just like a kindergartner would do."
Then he drew more complicated landscapes, with trees, hills and migrating birds.
His wife, Lucy, got him sketch pads and colored pencils, and DeGraff roughed out water scenes from places in Florida, where they had lived. He sketched them first in pencil, then in color when he was satisfied.
He created colorful castles and coal mines, rustic covered bridges and peaceful countrysides in a folk-art style similar to work done by Grandma Moses.
"I tried to draw over the years but never could," he said. "Like my pastor said, something good came out of something bad."
DeGraff didn't keep his newfound talent to himself. He rolled up his sketches, put them in "high-dollar paper-towel holders" and took them to work.
He's an attendant at the Barn Convenience Site near Lake Anna, and he likes to chat with people as they drop off trash. If he senses that a person would appreciate his art--and not toss it in one of the bins around him--he gives that person a drawing.
"I've done well over a thousand," said DeGraff, who corrected himself and added, "I've given away that many."
He loves the looks and hugs he gets when he gives an elderly person a dance hall scene from back in the day or an image of rolling farm fields.
His fans love him as well.
Jan Summers was talking with DeGraff on one of her weekly visits to the convenience site. She's a writer who appreciates art, so when he mentioned his work, she was thrilled to see it.
"It's just fabulous," said Summers, a Lake Anna resident. "He has such a wide range of objects that he draws, and his work is lovely and very expressive, very detailed, very beautiful."
She was even more surprised to find it at such a site.
"You never think you would go to a dump and meet an artist, but he certainly is, and he's just the sweetest guy," Summers said.
Mary Mahler, another Lake Anna resident, who majored in art, has come to appreciate DeGraff's talent and friendly disposition. "I thought he had a very interesting story."
Melvin Covington Jr., pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Bowling Green, has a DeGraff on the wall of his den at home and his office at church. The two have talked about how a painful episode can become a blessing.
"Tears can turn into triumph in God's hands," Covington said. "It's amazing how Joe is using his gift and bringing color into other people's lives."
Cathy Dyson: 540/374-5425
Email: cdyson@freelancestar.com
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Working, drawing or doing anything physical doesn't come easily to Joe DeGraff. He's had an assortment of health problems since he was mugged in 1995.
He walks with a cane, has arthritis in his hands and often wears a brace for carpal tunnel. Part of his right foot was amputated from damage done by a brown recluse spider and diabetes. His spine is deteriorating, and he had breast cancer last year. He retired once, after 33 years of work in environmental cleanup, but the lack of activity didn't suit him. He got a job at the Barn Convenience Site at Lake Anna and drives 38 miles, one way, for his $8.50-an-hour pay. From a spot inside a heated and air-conditioned building, he could monitor what people drop off, but that's not his style. "I don't sit in the shack all day like some of them do," he said. "I can't stand it. I'm a people person." |
