Draper grew up in Kosciusko, Mississippi where he graduated with a BFA from the University of Mississippi in 1974. During MFA graduate work at the University of Georgia in Athens in the mid '70s, Draper was able to study with Elaine de Kooning, an influential abstract expressionist painter.

Draper was immediately receptive to de Kooning's emphasis on the "importance of assembling a body of work with serial imagery." The significance of multiples is evidenced throughout his career and recently in his Healing Palm series. Draper explains that, "…by reworking a particular image over and over, I was able to come to an understanding of the form and reach somewhere that sublimated the image and went to another place." He readily admits why he sticks with a particular subject: "Once you've settled on the content and general composition within a format, it releases you to explore the pleasure of painting, to really jump into the process… You're free to play with color, texture, and surface…and all of us who came out of abstract expressionism are mainly interested in surface."

Draper's attraction to palm trees that now consume his attention developed several years ago, when he started visiting Cumberland Island. “I started to really notice the palm trees on Cumberland, which are so tenacious and elegant. You seldom see a toppled palm tree, yet they live in the most adverse conditions and are very adaptable. I began to see a single trunk or group of palm trees as a very stable, soothing, solid image, a quiet place for me to go in the whirlwind of my life, maintaining my hectic family and work schedule. There's also, in the solitary palms, an element of isolation, of not being 'part of the crowd.' And there's an awkwardness that sometimes also arises in my images of hands or birds.”

For Draper, each painting becomes a portrait (a self portrait perhaps), a swan, an egret, a person, a hand, or a palm tree. Each raw, naked and isolated in a atrix of saturated color. Singularly pressed into the rectangular format, the forms become elements in an evocative narrative.

A sought out addition for private and corporate collections internationally, Draper's fascination with this symbol of tenacious, enduring strength reveals a sense of respect for nature and the trials a lone tree can withstand.

Because of the strength and courage these resilient trees exhibit, numerous medical facilities have purchased the Healing Palms to install near patient treatment areas. Since then an overwhelming sense of optimism and courage has seemed to just fill the rooms and the hearts of all who enter.

Created in a wide range of colors, sizes and personalities, each Healing Palm is unique. These expressive and colorful paintings and limited edition prints can add life and a natural calm to almost any design trend.

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Healing Palms | Rustic Rivers | Living Dunes |Luminescent Landscapes | Uplifting Birds

Angel |Campay |Claborn | Draper |Hessam | Mabe
|Nemtoi |Penrod |Pettegrew | Stanford |Walker

© 2002, Signature Art Gallery; images © individual named artists