The Diggers While in Tennessee on an artist ’ s residency , Zupp often created works that were sculptural . Here , kitschy plastic toys and corrugated cardboard make a dimensional scene .

Coral Raker Having personal experience of rattlesnake removal via garden rakes , this piece appealed to me . Locals in the know rake over the snake until its head is snared between the tines , at which time it can be deposited in a bucket and hauled somewhere else . by Danielle Gallo

was pursuing him . With no intention of attending , he kept declining , and they kept offering him better scholarships . He wound up giving in , attending the graduate program for sculpture for roughly half the going rate .

Meanwhile , his art was selling steadily . These were the “ Chicken George ” years , when poultry featured prominently in his work , as well as other traditional folk themes . “ Really , I ’ m about as folk as David Bates ,” he says , referring to the acclaimed Dallas painter whose work strongly references American Regionalism . George considers himself a neo-regionalist , and counts the likes of Bates , John Alexander , George Bellows , Jack Levine and Thomas Hart Benton as artists he admires .

Returning to Redford from 2008 to 2010 , Zupp struck up a friendship with Big Bend photographer James Evans . He asked Evans for a little crash pad in Marathon , to be an artist-in-residence . “ He didn ’ t think I ’ d last ,” Zupp recalls . He bought a lot in Marathon in 2011 , on which he has steadily built his house and studio , a series of buildings made from found objects and adorned with sculptures .

These days , George sees a steady flow of sales and commissions . He completes two or three oil paintings every month , and he works on six or seven concurrently , lined up against his studio wall . He paints oils on panels of birch interior siding he buys from lumber yards , set into frames reclaimed from thrift stores , or wherever he finds them . He

Black Goat Wrangler Many of Zupp ’ s oil paintings depict ranch scenes , like this goat roping . Cows , poultry ( hence his early moniker ‘ Chicken George ’), and cowboys are counterpoints for each other , their motions blurring the lines of color between them .

sketches his charcoal drawings and some paintings on thick brown paper he buys in rolls . “ If the material is too precious , I start taking it too seriously ,” he says . �

Brisket Thief A man with a beef . When I asked him to explain this painting , Zupp said he envisioned the character as a brisket thief . He likes the idea of this ordinary , slightly antisocial action being immortalized . “ He ’ s just a guy ,” he says . “ He ’ s got a bottle in one hand , and he ’ s making off with a brisket he just snagged off the grill .” There ’ s less raw meat on the canvas these days than in previous years in Zupp ’ s work , and he resists the idea that his paintings speak larger social commentary . He prefers to think of his paintings as snapshots of a time and place . “ You make this thing . And it ’ s around for a long time , if it isn ’ t destroyed . The people and actions become part of the history that no one would remember otherwise .”

Zupp ’ s house , built largely of found materials , is adorned with sculptures and figures . Spray foam people , cow skulls , and random detritus make a dizzying visual garden .