Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: January 9, 1924 - Henry Faulkner

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From The Kentucky Encyclopedia -
Henry Lawrence Faulkner, painter, was born January 9, 1924, in Simpson County, Kentucky, to John Milton and Bessie Lee Faulkner. He was the tenth of thirteen children. After their mother's death, the children were sent to the Kentucky Children's Home in Louisville. In 1930 Faulkner went to live with foster parents Dan and Dora Whittimore near Falling Timber in Clay County. In 1939 Faulkner enrolled in the Louisville Junior Art School. In the fall of 1950 he enrolled in the writing program at Berea College for a few months. He won a scholarship to the Corcoran Gallery Academy in Washington, D.C., where he studied with Kenneth Stubbs, then spent three years at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles County. In 1955 Faulkner moved to Lexington, Kentucky , where he lived intermittently for the rest of his life. He spent most of his winters in Key West, Florida, where he became acquainted with Tennessee Williams, Bette Davis, James Herlihy, and Alice DeLamar, a wealthy heiress who became one of his principal patrons.

In July 1962 Faulkner purchased a small house on Arlington Avenue in Lexington and an eleven-acre farm eight miles south of the city. At a one-man exhibition at the Studio Club in Lexington in 1964, Faulkner acquired a new patron, Greene A. Settle, who eventually accumulated the largest collection of Faulkner's paintings. Inspired by the work of Chagall, Picasso, and Dali, Faulkner is best known for his oils and watercolors of fantasy still-lifes, landscapes, and animals, as well as for his poetry. His paintings have been exhibited in the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Louisville's J.B. Speed Art Museum and Thor Gallery, Closson's in Cincinnati, and the Hemingway Gallery in New York City.

In 1968 Faulkner purchased a house at 462 West Third Street in Lexington. He died in an automobile accident two blocks from his home on December 5, 1981, and was buried in the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church cemetery at Scottsville, Kentucky.

Selected Sources from UK Libraries: House, Charles, and Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. Henry Faulkner Oral History Project. 1982. Special Collections Research Center Spec Coll Research Center - Oral History Collection (OHHF ) Faulkner, Henry. Henry Faulkner Paintings. S.n.]: Robinson Gallery, 1968. Print. ND237.F38 A4 1968, Fine Arts Library - Closed Stacks House, Charles. The Outrageous Life of Henry Faulkner : Portrait of an Appalachian Artist. 1st ed. Knoxville: U of Tennessee, 1988. Print. ND237.F268 H68 1988, Fine Arts Library Preston, John. A Morning in the Life of Henry Faulkner : A Two-act Play. Sarasota, FL: Pub This, 2005. Print. PS3616.R47 M67 2005 copy 2, Special Collections Research Center Other Sources: Cross Gate Gallery http://www.crossgategallery.com/artist/henrylawrencefaulkner.html Unusual Kentucky http://unusualkentucky.blogspot.com/2008/06/henry-faulkner.html