Seeing spots

Folk art has always seemed most interesting for the delirious excess that rides shotgun to its quaint and quirky imagery of Jesus, the devil, drug addicts, farm animals, fat ladies and skinny men. Southern folk artists seem to be visually bulimic — unable to stop painting on every available surface, creating with such ferocity and profusion it’s as if each work could be the last. Or as George Andrews’ son, renowned American artist Benny Andrews, asserted of his father’s “tenacious” imagination, “ideas just bubbled out of his head like lava.”

The Georgia-born and reared George Andrews was certainly prone to that characteristic excess. Where some prefer leopard prints or chintz, Andrews covered what looks to be every household surface with sunny yellows, fire-engine reds and picket-fence whites in the perky shapes of color that have led to his moniker “the Dot Man.” In his solo show at Barbara Archer Gallery, the quotidian canvases for Andrews’ creativity are legion: women’s pumps, plastic plates, copper Bundt pans, plastic detergent jugs, metal buckets, ceramic tchotchkes, framed pictures, chairs, even a block of Styrofoam. Like kudzu, the dots and color hath run amuck.

The work rambles from the certifiably folk to the oddly conceptual, like the kitschy terra cotta basket of kitties Andrews has decorated with black beards and glasses reminiscent of a Viennese psychoanalyst.

Andrews’ output is arranged in tableaux that mimic a home interior outfitted with clusters of decorated objects and paintings. The charm of these groupings is dependent upon how much of the Southern folk vernacular of cheery colors and whimsy one can stomach in a lifetime.

In addition to those groupings of works for sale are more interesting portraits of Andrews’ kinfolk — a family reunion commissioned by Benny Andrews (whose own work is concurrently on view at Savannah Gallery in Buckhead). A standout amongst the Andrews clan, with their pitch-black eyebrows and open-mouthed, toothy displays, is George’s portrait of one of his brood of 10 children. Daughter Valeria has a corona of blazing citrus yellow hair and is all duded up in her postal worker uniform, accessorized with a horseshoe rhinestone charm. The energy so vividly displayed in those signature dots comes through just as clearly in these beguiling portraits, which beam with family pride.

George Andrews: The Dot Man runs through March 27 at Barbara Archer Gallery, 1123 Zonolite Road, Suite 27. Wed.-Sat. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. 404-815-1545. www.barbaraarcher.com.