Artist

O. L. ​“Geech” Samuels

born Wilcox County, GA 1931-died Tallahassee, FL 2017
Media - samuels_ol.jpg - 90526
Originally photographed by Chuck Rosenak. Image is courtesy of the Chuck and Jan Rosenak research material, 1990-1999, in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Also known as
  • O. L. Samuels
  • Ossie Lee Samuels
Born
Wilcox County, Georgia, United States
Died
Tallahassee, Florida, United States
Active in
  • Moultrie, Georgia, United States
Biography

Ossie Lee "Geech" Samuels left home at the age of eight and worked in New York City before returning to the South in 1960. In 1982, while working as a tree surgeon in Georgia, Samuels was injured by a falling tree. He fell into a deep depression after the accident but found that carving helped ease the pain. (Betty-Carol Sellen, Self Taught, Outsider, and Folk Art, 2000)