DON MCLAWS

Don McLaws is a soft-spoken artist from Baton Rouge who paints imaginative scenes in acrylic paint with titles such as "Dancing Grandma" and "Armageddon". He is a self-taught artist who comes up with his themes from memories and his vivid imagination. He also carves recorders, pan flutes, wind chimes and oriental hand held defense mechanisms. At one time he carved birds and crawfish out of cypress root but now has no place to store it, so he has mainly been focusing on his instruments and paintings for the last several years. He said that he used to make dummies out of discarded material and elk heads found in taxidermist garbage cans. Mr. McLaws was born in 1931 and is a retired guard who once worked on a towboat in St. Louis as well. He now resides in Baton Rouge with his stepdaughter.