Eddie Arning: Artist

Arning began to experience symptoms of mental illness in his mid-20s. Ultimately, an attack on his mother landed Arning in jail. A 1928 trial found him dangerous by reason of insanity and committed him to the Austin State Hospital, which would be his home for the next 36 years.

In 1964, Arning was transferred to a nursing home. That year, Helen Mayfield, one of his therapists, arranged various activities for the residents to try. This included a station with coloring book pages and crayons.

Mayfield noticed that Arning gravitated toward this area and that his work included original lines outside of the printed lines. He also used an unexpected color palette. Soon, Mayfield decided to switch out the coloring pages for pieces of plain drawing paper.

In his first drawings, objects were either very small or drawn against a background with no contrast. Mayfield said he should consider drawing things in a larger scale to make use of the entire sheet of large construction paper. She encouraged him, even in areas of white, to use white crayon so that his drawings covered the entire surface of the paper.

Arning’s earliest works were drawn from memories, but around 1966, he began using magazines as sources of inspiration, like this image. He would tear out illustrations from stories or advertisements that he carefully selected because he felt he could improve them.

Arning’s drawings are not copies but are rather his take on the picture, as if the viewer is seeing the image through his eyes. A friend of his once noted that he had given Arning an illustration of a painting that he thought Arning might like. However, Arning returned it because “it was a picture already."

In 1970, Arning was released from the hospital’s care but chose to remain at the nursing home, paying a portion of his rent with proceeds from his art. He left the nursing home in 1973 to live with his sister, Ida, and within a year of this move, he stopped drawing. Arning died in 1993.

In the 1980s, a contemporary artist described Arning’s work by saying, "It is both refreshing and disarming to find occasionally a person with simple equipment who speaks so eloquently within his medium." This sentiment captures what audiences have appreciated about Arning's art ever since.