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Editor’s Note: On Wednesday, The Carthage Press published a guide to the Midwest Gathering of the Artists, but one artist was incorrect. It turns out there are at least two artists in the country named Bob Graham. The one in the program was from Louisiana, but the one who attended the MGA was from Charleston, South Carolina. This story is about him.
When Bob Graham was a kid, he was like most kids, he loved to draw.
Unlike most kids though, Graham never lost that love and continues to draw today, 20 years after graduating from school.
Graham, from Charleston, S.C., participated in his first ever Midwest Gathering of the artists. He was one of 32 artists who came to Carthage from across the country to sell their wares and socialize with other artists and buyers.
Graham may be from the East Coast, but he can draw and paint cowboys, Indians, rodeos and other western scenes with the best of the artists from Texas, Oklahoma and out west.
“It’s cowboys, rodeos, all that fun stuff,” Graham said when talking about his work.
“I started out as a historical artist, doing a lot of the War Between the States,” he said. “A lot of the guys I’d ride with or photographs or see as models, they were also cowboys and they asked me one day, we’re doing a team roping thing, do you want to come out with us and I was like sure. There is just something about the cowboy code of ethics, I really dig the fact that your handshake is your word and that’s all you need.”
Graham recalls as a kid always looking forward to his mom going grocery shopping because it meant he had more paper on which to draw.
“When I was growing up as a kid, back when they had paper grocery bags, my mom would open them up for me and she said for hours on the kitchen floor, that all I wanted to do was draw,” he said. “She said I hated coloring books, that I wanted a pen or a pencil and I could be entertained for hours.”
He let his imagination run away with him through the pencil and those brown paper bags, drawing tanks, dinosaurs, dinosaurs eating tanks, airplanes, spaceships and the like.
He took odd jobs painting houses in school, but since school has been able to make a living with his art.
Editor’s Note: On Wednesday, The Carthage Press published a guide to the Midwest Gathering of the Artists, but one artist was incorrect. It turns out there are at least two artists in the country named Bob Graham. The one in the program was from Louisiana, but the one who attended the MGA was from Charleston, South Carolina. This story is about him.
When Bob Graham was a kid, he was like most kids, he loved to draw.
Unlike most kids though, Graham never lost that love and continues to draw today, 20 years after graduating from school.
Graham, from Charleston, S.C., participated in his first ever Midwest Gathering of the artists. He was one of 32 artists who came to Carthage from across the country to sell their wares and socialize with other artists and buyers.
Graham may be from the East Coast, but he can draw and paint cowboys, Indians, rodeos and other western scenes with the best of the artists from Texas, Oklahoma and out west.
“It’s cowboys, rodeos, all that fun stuff,” Graham said when talking about his work.
“I started out as a historical artist, doing a lot of the War Between the States,” he said. “A lot of the guys I’d ride with or photographs or see as models, they were also cowboys and they asked me one day, we’re doing a team roping thing, do you want to come out with us and I was like sure. There is just something about the cowboy code of ethics, I really dig the fact that your handshake is your word and that’s all you need.”
Graham recalls as a kid always looking forward to his mom going grocery shopping because it meant he had more paper on which to draw.
“When I was growing up as a kid, back when they had paper grocery bags, my mom would open them up for me and she said for hours on the kitchen floor, that all I wanted to do was draw,” he said. “She said I hated coloring books, that I wanted a pen or a pencil and I could be entertained for hours.”
He let his imagination run away with him through the pencil and those brown paper bags, drawing tanks, dinosaurs, dinosaurs eating tanks, airplanes, spaceships and the like.
He took odd jobs painting houses in school, but since school has been able to make a living with his art.
The social networking site Facebook led him, through a friendship with Carthage artist Andy Thomas, to start selling his work at Cherry’s Custom Framing on the Carthage Square.
Then Sandy Higgins invited him to show at the Midwest Gathering this year.
“I was like, I am there,” Graham said. “Tell me when and where, I’m packing up the horse and coming to town.”
Graham said he was immediately taken with Carthage’s history.
“I was so happy to get on Route 66, because on the map, it says 96, then I started seeing the shields that say Route 66 and I said oh my gosh, I’m on a piece of Americana here and I didn’t even know it,” he said. “Then one of the first battles of the Civil War was fought here, so I was immediately drawn to that history part. One of the first things I saw was the courthouse and I was blown away by that.”
