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RONALD COOPER AMERICAN, KENTUCKY, 1931-2012 TRUCK DESTINATION TO HELL Mixed media and found object (Tonka truck) Catalogue note: Ronald Cooper was born in Plummers Mill, a tiny farming community in northeast Kentucky, the youngest of eleven children. He attended the local Christian Holiness Church, and his early religious grounding was later to have a defining influence on his body of work as an artist. In 1949, Cooper married sixteen-year-old Jessie Dunaway. Ronald and Jessie became artists by chance in their mid-fifties. After years of working in grocery stores and supermarkets in Kentucky and Ohio, the Coopers then managed their own country store. When this endeavor failed after eight years, Ronald was forced to take a job in quality control at a warehouse, and Jessie found employment at a nut packaging plant. In 1984, he was critically injured in an automobile accident which left him paralyzed from the waist down. While in recovery, he suffered from clinical depression and began having nightmares which he found he could only banish through artmaking. Cooper first whittled animals in the mountain craft style, and then he moved to producing larger, more intricate wood sculptures. The husband and wife team complemented one another's work - often collaborating. Jessie Cooper explained: "We each do our separate thing. But if I need something carved, he carves, and I sometimes paint on his." Their work quickly rose to fame in the art world at an international level. Ronald is best known for his graphic, didactic sculptures of hell featuring tortured sinners and naked devils, often portrayed on found pieces of furniture and cabinetry. His work has been shown widely since the early 1990s and is in numerous public and private collections. Ref.: Meehan, Lindsay. "He's Got You and Me Brother." The University of Michigan Museum of Art. www.umma.umich.edu.