Young is mainly self-taught, and his work has been exhibited alongside other prominent outsider artists, such as Bill Traylor, Nellie Mae Rowe and Thornton Dial.
Young's time at Chapman Kelly studio, between 1959 and 1963, allowed him to refine his drawing technique and also served as an introduction to the Dallas art world.
Many noteworthy artists either exhibited or taught at the Chapman Kelly Atelier, including Ann Cushing, Deforrest Judd, and Otis Dozier.
[2] Several well-known visiting artists also passed through the school during Young's time of study, including Elaine de Kooning, Hobson Pittman, Ben Kamihira, and David DeLong.
This job proved to be critical to his artistic development, as he began working with the rolls of heavy brown kraft paper used to wrap the linoleum to make large-format, almost scroll-like drawings.
Young later began working as a shoe-shiner, a trade he continues today at Griffin Barber Stylist in Farmer's Branch, a suburb outside of Dallas.
Dianne Solis, writing about Young in the Dallas Morning News in 2009, described his unconventional studio: “The tools of his twin trades spill near his patched black leather chair.
However, in Young’s drawings, they become intriguing images that dance and float on the surface of the paper, somewhere between the real world and fantasy land".
Sarah Gold, reviewing the "Inside the Outside Exhibition" for the New York Times, wrote of Young’s work: “His untitled pieces feature enigmatic objects — unrecognizable, but executed as carefully as medical illustrations — suspended in negative space, and all of them share a certain sort of clinical, sci-fi aspect.
One drawing, of a segmented, horn-shaped form, might be a piece of armor worn by a futuristic warrior; another long-stemmed, geometric structure might be a space station on a distant planet.
-Trenton Doyle Hancock, “A Question of the Visionary, ” catalog essay accompanying exhibition “Inside the Outside: Five Self-Taught Artists from the Louis-Dreyfus Collection,” Katonah Museum of Art, NY, 2015.
-Karen Wilkin, “Apart from the Mainstream,” catalog essay accompanying exhibition “Inside the Outside: Five Self-Taught Artists from the Louis-Dreyfus Collection,” Katonah Museum of Art, NY, 2015.