Before he started making art in a dedicated fashion, the English artist James Lloyd worked variously as a farmer, laborer, bus conductor, and policeman, among other occupations. In 1964 he became the unlikely subject of a television documentary by filmmaker Ken Russell, The Dotty World of James Lloyd. The title referred to the painstaking pointillist technique that Lloyd devised after realizing that reproductions of his favorite paintings by such artists as J.M.W. Turner and John Constable were composed of tiny dots of color in the chromolithographic printing process. He developed his own method of minute dot painting using brushes with just a few hairs to make verdant scenes of his English countryside and rural life.

Working at his kitchen table, surrounded by his large family, Lloyd joyously and meticulously recorded the nostalgic themes that were significant to him. In this example, though, the artist celebrates the famous rock band The Who through his almost obsessive accretion of depth and texture through hand-stippling.

Stacy C. Hollander, "The Who," exhibition label for Recent Gifts. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2013.