Felix Virgous

B. 1948

Felix Virgous was born October 30, 1948, in Woodstock, Tennessee.  He attended elementary school for 4 years. Virgous comments on black ghetto society by combining biblical stories with images from popular culture in his unusual paintings and assemblages. When he was 12 years old, he fell from a swing and severely injured his back. “Since then,” he said, “I can’t take no heavy jobs.  I just take a few easy ones like cutting grass.”   In the early 1980s, Virgous converted a free-standing garage in an alley behind his parents’ home into a “clubhouse” his private hideaway for making art. He says that the “Lord crawls into my head each day and tells me what you paint.” The accident that Virgous suffered as a child may have limited his work and physical activities but it also served to interest him in art.  He started to paint about 1960, shortly after his fall and has continued ever since.  When the artist moved to Memphis with his parents in the early 1980s, he setup his “clubhouse” so that he would have a more conducive environment in which to paint. Virgous was discovered by Lonnie Holey.  His brightly painted work occasionally appears on gallery sites and auctions. ²   

Any other further info/bio and whereabouts on Felix would be appreciated.