His work can be somewhat elusive instead of settling into any one medium or predictable style, Foulkes weaves together music, painting, assemblage, illustration and collage to create works of irreverence and caustic satire that take on materialism, repressed sexuality, violence, greed and humanity’s (especially America’s) propensity toward these moral deprivations. Foulkes’ visual work is marked by an anti-establishment contrarianism that rages against art as commodification. Instead of focusing on the social aspects of cultivating his art career, Foulkes committed himself to his family and his art practice, driving a taxi during the day. Foulkes found the structure of the school stifling and only attended for two years.įoulkes began showing his work at Ferus Gallery in 1959, then run by famed curator Walter Hopps. His classmates there included other 20th century luminaries such as Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, celebrated Disney animators and costume designer Edith Head, as well as his future wife, Kelly Kimball, the daughter of one of the head animators at Disney, to whom he married in 1958. After serving in the army for two years, Foulkes moved to Los Angles in 1957 to attend the progressive Chouinard Art Institute, which was founded by Walt Disney and later became California Institute of the Arts. While in Germany, he worked on small watercolors and drawings and also absorbed the dark and devastating atmosphere of post-war Germany.

He studied music at Central Washington College for a short time before being drafted into the Army in 1954.

Foulkes first ventures into visual art were copying comic books and he had aspirations to be a cartoonist. He started playing music at eleven-years-old, inspired by the satirical and novelty bandleader Spike Jones. Llyn Foulkes was born in 1934 in Yakima, Washington and began studying music and art at a young age.

Llyn foulkes one man band