Visionary Folk Artist Leon Kennedy created this original sculpture in 2012. An open edition limited to the life of the mold has been issued, of which this is the very first cast.

Signed in mold on front of work: "Leon Kennedy 2012" and signed by artist hand on back: "Leon Kennedy 2012" with edition number.

Size: 7" x 9" x 3"

Material: Cast stone with paint wash, with metal wire for hanging embedded in back.

African-American spiritual visionary Leon Kennedy (b. 1945, Houston, Texas) uses mixed media on found objects to paint ecstatic visions, memory paintings, and urban life portraits. Kennedy is featured on several pages of Rosnak's "Contemporary American Folk Art" (Abbeville, 1996), and in Betty-Carol Sellen's important survey, "Self Taught, Outsider, and Folk Art" (McFarland & Company, 1999).

In 1997, the Smithsonian Institution purchased 200 significant works from the renowned Rosenak collection for an undisclosed sum estimated to be near $2M. This acquisition included a bed-sheet by Kennedy. The 1997 Folk Art Messenger, Vol. 10, No.3, reported that the acquisition makes the Smithsonian American Art Museum the world's preeminent repository for American self-taught art.
"It is our desire to see them as part of the history of 20th-century American art," said Chuck Rosenak.

Mentioning Kennedy, the article notes these works were the first American collection exhibited at the Collection de l'Art Brut, Switzerland, which "testifies to its quality and uniqueness." The Leon Kennedy masterwork now resides at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, while photos of Kennedy and other materials of Kennedy's are available for study at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.


Permanent collections

1997 Smithsonian American Art Museum (then the National Museum of American Art) acquisition.

1990 The House of Blues, multiple acquisitions.