Fred Carter, 1911-1992:

Artist, Visionary, and Collector of all things Appalachia

 

Fred Carter was a self-taught artist who did not begin to paint and carve wood until he was fifty years old. When he died in 1992, fame had not yet come to him. Few people outside the southwest Virginia area knew his art and its haunting beauty. Slowly, this Dickenson County native is becoming acknowledged by the art world, with collections of his art being sought after for exhibits by galleries from both far and near.

 

Born January 6, 1911, Fred Carter was raised in the rolling farm country of Scott County, Virginia. Even before the Depression, money was scarce, and young Fred and his numerous siblings worked hard at growing and harvesting crops, as well as dozens of other chores necessary to survive on a farm in those days.

 

Carter moved to the Clintwood area of Dickenson County as a young man to help work in his uncle's store. He settled there and became a successful businessman, builder, landscape architect, and nurseryman. By this time he had also become a collector of Appalachian artifacts. Fred Carter built the Cumberland Museum in Clintwood to house the artifacts he found and the art that he created. He said the museum housed "Primitive Things of Toil and Love". At one time the museum held the twin state's most complete collection of early Appalachian artifacts.

 

That boyhood "harmony with the earth" later became a driving force in his artistic expression. "You're born and your first impressions are from the earth, the people, the animals," he said. "In my carving Mountain Family, for example, the creative urge reflects where I come from. What you do, you do in remembrance of all the things that moved you, things you loved and felt strongly about. You grow intimate with all the materials you work with."

 

Carter possessed a remarkable personality that brought together a rare combination of gifts. Blessed with an immense energy that sparked his creative drive, he cherished the plain, the ordinary, and the radiant. He often spoke with great philosophical insight and, moreover, listened as elements in the natural world "spoke" to him. He was curious about man's predicament and his strangeness. In short, he had an ardent vision of the world.

Much of his work expressed his anger at the environmental destruction of the land and the injustices against people that society does nothing about. His paintings and sculptures range from the abstract to the realistic. Among his art works are a carved statue of a starving mountain woman and her children, a painting of the destruction caused by strip mining, and a wooden bust of a miner with black lung disease. And yet other of his works reveals the true beauty of the human spirit.

The contents of Fred Carter's beloved Cumberland Museum were sold at auction after his death, the auction taking place on May 27, 1995, with Mason and Mason Auctions of Whitesburg, Kentucky presiding. In addition to some pieces of his art, other items sold included primitive farming tools, logging and mining tools, railroad items, Spanish American and WWI Military items, an authentic moonshine still, thousands of fossils, and an actual log from the first Dickenson County Jail.

Fred Carter was truly a Dickenson County treasure, and unfortunately one who was not widely recognized as such until after his death. But through the legacy of art he left behind his life will always be remembered - and felt.

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This page updated September 18, 2004

 

 

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