Blake Boyd

Blake Nelson Boyd
Blake Nelson Boyd in 2009 by David Gamble.
Born	1 October 1970 (1970-10) (age 46) Slidell, Louisiana, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	Memphis College of Art,
Known for	Conceptual art, installation art, painting
Notable work	Tears of a Clown, Blood Christ, Destroyer
Awards	Pollock Krasner 2007-8

Blake Nelson Boyd, commonly known as Blake Boyd, (born October 1, 1970) is an American film actor, comedian, and visual artist who lives and works in New Orleans and London. Boyd was mentored by Andres Serrano and Andy Warhol Factory manager Billy Name in the 1990s. Boyd's visual art takes many different forms of expression including painting, photography, drawing, sculpture, video and installation.

Boyd was born and raised in Slidell, Louisiana, a small town not far from New Orleans. His mother is an elementary school teacher, who left the family when Boyd was eleven. His father is the owner of a construction company and left Blake to his own devices from his teenage years onward. At the age of sixteen Boyd started to paint, with the ambition of showing professionally, and began his apprenticeship with an established local artist. Boyd had to drop out of Memphis College of Art in 1989 for financial reasons and continued his apprenticeship until 2002.

At twenty-one Boyd met his first significant mentor, New York artist Andres Serrano, who, knowing Boyd's appreciation of Andy Warhol, introduced him to Taylor Mead. This friendship expanded to include other members of the Warhol Factory, including Billy Name, Ultra Violet, Allen Midgette, Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro and Robert Heide.

In the summer of his sixteenth year Boyd took the money from his garage sale and flew to Los Angeles to be discovered for film. There he met, and photographed, another of his heroes, Johnny Carson. This was the first of Boyd's celebrity portraits but, unfortunately, not the beginning of his film career as he intended. In recent years Hollywood has come to Louisiana and Boyd has appeared in the short-lived TV series K-Ville, the acclaimed Treme, and the feature films Deja Vu, Tribute and Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (in which he is credited as Mr. Afraid of the Ground Man).