Stephen JM Palmer
was born in 1882.
He worked as a farm laborer and logger in rural Wisconsin and Minnesota.
He suffered a spinal injury in the 1920s that left him bedridden in later life.
He painted prolifically during his last decades and forged a cult-like devotion with his fellow religious outsiders. The Cold War, the conversion of Russia, and his Sacrificial Love Society were important to him.
His medium was pen, ink, and water color. His work... stylized, intense, obsessive, colorful, dynamic, naive. His inspiration came from Catholic missals, magazines and calendars of the day with their iconic illustrations and there is evidence he aspired to be an artist-designer.
The initials JM denote his devotion to Jesus and Mary.
Stephen JM Palmer died in 1965.
"Holy Mary Pray For Me" is inscribed on his tombstone, alone, in a row for single men.
I discovered his work in 2003 in Necedah, Wisconsin, the site of an unsanctioned Catholic shrine to the Virgin Mary.
They had been stored for many years in an outbuilding on the estate of one of his followers.
