Blair Hobbs is a mixed-media collage Artist and writer based in Oxford Mississippi creating layered and whimsical narrative works about herself, her travels and the South. Her most recent body of work Birthday Cake for Flannery was inspired by the writing, life and complicated characters of the renowned Southern writer, Flannery O’Connor.
Recently retired from teaching at the University of Mississippi, Blair wanted to circle back to the stories that “helped me navigate my early college years at Auburn University, when evangelical hypocrisy was afoot and self-loathing bloomed inside of me,” she says.
“The short story ‘Revelation’ affected me the most back then. I thought that I was becoming her character Mary Grace, seething with rage. I identified with O’Connor’s mental self-flagellation, too. In one of her letters, O’Connor wrote of her unpleasant characters, ‘[T]hey’re all, even the worst of them, me, so my tolerance for them is supreme.’”
For this series, Blair re-read stories to pull descriptive language that could be translated into visual art. “One thing I love about O’Connor’s work is the wit that shimmers through the dark of her Southern Gothic stories,” says Blair.
“About the time I first read O’Connor, I also began to listen to R.E.M. From them, I learned about Outsider Artist, Howard Finster. When I read O’Connor’s stories, I pictured her settings and characters in Finster’s color palette. A world came into focus. These canvases were born of that world.” March 25, 2025 would have been Flannery O’Connor’s 100th birthday.
"Birthday Cake for Flannery," mixed media on canvas, 30 by 24 inches
"My Revelation: Reading Flannery O’Connor for the First Time," mixed media on canvas, 16 by 12 inches
"Flannery O’Connor’s Portrait," mixed media on canvas, 16 by 12 inches
“God Made Me This Way,” from “A Temple of the Holy Ghost”, mixed media on canvas, 30 by 24 inches
“She Could Never be a Saint, But She Thought She Could Be a Martyr if They Killed Her Real Quick,” from “A Temple of the Holy Ghost”, mixed media on canvas, 24 by 30 inches
"“Look Like I can’t Get Nothing Down Them Two but Co’Cola & Candy,” from “Revelation,"
mixed media on canvas, 30 by 24 inches
“Mystical Peacock,” from “The Displaced Person," mixed media on canvas, 30 by 24 inches
“Give Her Leg Back,” from “Good Country People”, mixed media on canvas, 20 by 16 inches
"I Was Mary Grace & Joy Hulga from “Revelation” & “Good Country People," mixed media on canvas, 18 by 18 inches
“I’ Don’t Want To Hold Hands with Him”’, June Star said, ‘“He Reminds Me of a Pig", mixed media on canvas, 16 by 12 inches
“Monkey in a Lacey Chinaberry Tree,” from “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” mixed media on canvas, 40 by 30 inches
“Young Parker, Earnest as a Loaf of Bread,” from “Parker’s Back," mixed media on canvas, 20 by 16 inches
“You’re a Walking Panner Rammer,” from “Parker’s Back," mixed media on canvas, 40 by 30 inches
"Wise Blood," mixed media, 11 by 9 inches
“Hazel Motes & His Church Without Christ,” from “Wise Blood," mixed media on canvas, 24 by 20 inches
“That Girl is Going to be a Lunatic, Ain’t she?” from “Revelation," mixed media on canvas, 18 by 18 inches
"Go Back to Hell Where You Came From, You Old Warthog From Hell, From Revelation," mixed media on canvas, 18 by 18 inches
For “Birthday Cake for Flannery,” Blair Hobbs revisited Flannery O’Connor’s short stories “Revelation,” “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” “The Displaced Person,” “A Temple Of The Holy Ghost,” “Parker’s Back,” “Good Country People,” the novel, Wise Blood, and her collected letters, Good Things Out of Nazareth.
Notes on Blair's Process:
“All the pieces are made of mixed media. I draw on paper first. Then I paint or pencil-color each character, cut them out, and arrange them on a painted canvas. I glue the pieces to the canvas. Sometimes I sew them. As I plot the figures, I also plot a narrative and usually include words to help direct the narrative.
O’Connor writes about the sun and the sky a lot, often symbolically, so I wanted the pieces in this show to have an extra dose of shine—gold leaf, broken Christmas balls, candy wrappers, bronze dust, crushed glass, glitter, and sequins. Other materials include duct tape, embroidery thread, mulberry papers, fabric scraps, a vintage paper doll, ribbons—even tacky plastic placemats.”
Blair Hobbs holds a BA in English literature from Auburn University, an MA in Creative Writing from Hollins University, and an MFA in Creative Writing, with an emphasis in poetry, at the University of Michigan. Now retired, she was a Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi for 28 years. A variety of journals and magazines have published Blair’s poetry, most recently in The Oxford American’s 2020 “Place” issue. Her visual art has been shown and collected across the Southeast.
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