Early Outsider painting is a portrait by. Alva Gene Dexhimer FOLK ARTIST. RED HAIRED LADY #4. 12x 15 inches circa 1970’s, unsigned. I have a number of portraits by Alva Gene Dexhimer. Some are signed on the back, and some unsigned. I bought them all at the same time. See photo of the group. Alva Gene Dexhimer was born in Clarksburg, Missouri in 1931 and lived in central Missouri his entire life. As a five-year old boy, he fell off a tractor and suffered a severe head injury. This accident led to learning disabilities, which caused him to drop out of school after the eighth grade. Dexhimer constructed in his life time a variety of objects from scrap wood, using only a hammer and a handsaw as tools. Comicbooks with a western theme were among his favorites, and movie cowboys like Gene Autry appear in his work. Willem Volkersz, an extensive collector of this genre of work. In 1984, he included Dexheimer’s work in FOLK ART/FOR SALE, an exhibition for the Kansas City Art Institute. Shortly thereafter, his work was included in Deliberate Lives – A Celebration of Three Missouri Masters at First Street Forum in St. Louis, Word and Image in American Folk Art (for the Mid-America Arts Alliance) and The Radiant Object–Self-Taught Artists from the Volkersz Collection which was organized by Montana State University. See photo of some Dexheimer paintings from the Volkersz collection. Complications from this disease led to a stroke and, several months later, to his death at the age of 52 in 1984.