o Floridas by MaryAnnCarroll a marshseashore Bottom right by Al Black a lonelystretch of highway notsurprisingly aecurring theme for thepainters VERLEAF LEFT ID: 290419
Download Pdf The PPT/PDF document "ALL 2005 AMERICAN LEGACYPHOTO CREDIT" is the property of its rightful owner. Permission is granted to download and print the materials on this web site for personal, non-commercial use only, and to display it on your personal computer provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright notices contained in the materials. By downloading content from our website, you accept the terms of this agreement.
ALL 2005 AMERICAN LEGACYPHOTO CREDIT o Floridas by MaryAnnCarroll, a marshseashore. Bottom right, by Al Black, a lonelystretch of highway, notsurprisingly, aecurring theme for thepainters. VERLEAF: LEFTIMAGE COURTESY OF LIVINGSTON ROBERTS; RIGHTIMAGEOURTESY OF JAMES GIBSON. THIS PAGE: TOP LEFT AND TOP RIGHTIMAGESOURTESY OF MARY ANN CARROLL; BOTTOMIMAGE COURTESY OF AL BLACK.AMERICAN LEGACYALL 2005privileged, including many of the statesAfrican-Americans, toiled in turpentineGibson, who was born in 1938 and lived in segregated Fort Pierce, avoided that fate. He was a member of a group of about 30 highly motivated and talentedblack painters who sold their work alongFloridas east coastthe Highwaymen.As sit-ins across the state sparked raceriots and Ku Klux Klan terrorism, an un-usual friendship grew between a coupleessful white landscape painter named Albert Backus, who lived in Fort Pierce.1954 Backus, who was in his late for-ties, met Harold Newton, a self-taughtblack artist, and persuaded him to try ALL 2005 AMERICAN LEGACYings in 24 hours. He recalled, We wereoung and competitive; painting was ex-hilarating. We would get together andpaint for days, inspiring, motivating, andTheir preferred medium was oils, theirools were palette knives, their canvasan inexpensive building material made of compressed ber, which they primedwith shellac. On these boards they re-created their surroundings: the turbul-ent sea, graceful herons in tranquil la-ne of Hairs apprentices rememberedbeing told to look at nature as if thetruth lies beyond the horizon.he paintings were thenloaded into someones car, some-times even before they were dry,and sold for 5 to 30 dollars apiece in parking lots, on beachfront boardwalks,or to the owners of the hundreds of newbuildings going up along U.S. . Onepainter, Willie Reagan, described theirschedule as painting on Monday, Tues-day, andWednesday, framing on Thurs-day, selling on Friday and Saturday . . .sometimes Sunday. Despite the freneticpace and concern with sales, they wereommitted to their craft. Rodney Demps,hom Hair hired to do preliminary workon the skies, said, Alfred made thosepanels come alive. . . . He had a lot of tal-ent, a lot of talent.He was gifted. Liv-ingston Roberts insisted, I wanted to be landscapes. A year later, at the urging ofhis high school teacher, 14-year-old Alfredair showed up at Backuss studio.Therehe learned to mix and apply paint, quick-ly mastering these skills and using themdevelop his own style. Backus had anagent to promote his painting, but Hairand Newton decided the best place tosell their own work was alongside theoads in and around Fort Pierce.lionaire, realized that no one would paymuch money for paintings by a black man, so he decided to make many of them and sell them cheap. He built an industry in his yard, working on 10 to 20paintings at once, and later employing his wife and in-laws as salespeople.Hisspeed gave Hairs work a dynamic, mus-cular quality, bright reds slashing across a molten sky. Newton hewed closer toBackuss inuence, with balanced com-positions and a more limited palette. the early 1960s friends of Hair andon, seeing their success, were eager tolearn how to paint. They regularly gath-ered in Hairs or Newtons yard, learningthe skills, working into the night, drink-good-natured taunts, they tried to bestone anothers output. Hair reportedly didexercises to build up his strength so heould paint faster. James Gibson, who,encouraged by his family, had paintedsince he was a teenager, claimed to be themost prolic, once completing 100 paint- OP: IMAGE COURTESY OF WILLIE DANIELS; BOTTOM: DON BARTLETTI/LOS ANGELES Above: TKTKTK TKTKTKTKTKTKTKT TKTTKTKTK. At right,outside his Floridaa good painter, one of the best.Theyalso wanted to make enough money tooid taking menial jobs, and for themost part they succeeded.ary ann carroll metrold Newton in the late1950s. She was a single motherinFort Pierce doing whatever she couldmake ends meetcleaning house, cut-ting grass, and even installing ceiling fans.ne day she noticed a car painted withames and, admiring the handiwork,struck up a conversation with its owner.started visiting his house. Everybody recalled. Somebody says they can paintbetter or paint faster.Soon she was theonly woman in his group. She was a bit ofan outsider, but Newton nurtured her.He always had time, she remembered.er work stands out for its clarity; eleganthite trees stretch bare branches into asaturated sky. Unlike the dense canvases AMERICAN LEGACYALL 2005 AMERICAN LEGACYALL 2005IMAGE COURTESY OF JAMES GIBSONof her fellows, her paintings are radiantwith empty space, glowing skies, and stillwatke the rest of the Highwaymen, shebrilliantly captures a mythical Florida, alush fantasyland of cool breezes, exoticbirds, and palm trees, on a distinctly human scale.Rather than the distant,sweeping vistas of most traditional land-scape art, the Highwaymen painted viewsthe eye could capture in an instant. In therds of Gary Monroe, the author of Theighwaymen:Floridas African-American Land-scape Painters, their oils yielded a kind ofabula rasa into which new Floridians canread their own dream landscape. Theirolors arent accurate or serene but endup being a perfect metaphor for whatpeople think about Florida andbelieveFlorida to be all about.heir success also came from their unique selling style,hich was as energetic and spon-aneous as their art. They sometimes traveled 130 miles south to Miami, know-ing they needed to sell at least enoughpaintings to buy the gas to get back. Inthe mid-1960s one Highwayman, Al Black,emerged as the groups smoothest andmost successful salesman and its unof-cial agent, working on commission. Afterasking permission, he would spread outpaintings on the oor of a new bank orofce building. He recalled his sales pitch:the artists from Fort Pierce that do theFlorida landscape.I want to know if youuld be interested, if it wouldnt take upoo much of your time.. . . If a housewifelooked interested in a certain painting, Id tell her, Maam, you got good taste;thats the most expensive of them. Al-though most of the buyers were white,the mix of original paintings and smoothsalesmanship made the artists exemptfrom the hostility and suspicion manyALL 2005 AMERICAN LEGACY left and top, lagoonsprimeval andhaunting, by Willieaniels and James blacks experienced in 1960s Florida.inting proved lucrative for the High-ymen into the 1970s, but then thegroup started to disintegrate. On August9, 1970, Alfred Hair, who had taught somany young painters, was murdered at aort Pierce juke joint. Hezekiah Baker,ho had already left painting to sell insurance, recalled, There was nothing shoot for after Alfred died. Hair hadgalvanized the other painters who hadgathered in his yard to soak up his energyartist. Some continued, but those whostruck out on their own found that policehad begun enforcing nonsolicitation lawsand demanding vendors licenses.Their painting style changed, too, assome, to be more like the formally trainedsketching from memory, as they had donebefore. People stopped buying their paintings, and they drifted back into their day jobs as truck drivers, day la-borers, and art teachers. Harold New-on died in 1994 after suffering a stroke.n the early s jim fitch,now a curator at the Museum of Florida Art and Culture, in Avon Park,began searching for these artists work.ch had known of the itinerant paint-ers, but as he culled pieces from ea mar-ets and yard sales, he realized how re-markable they were. In 1994 he coinedthe term Highwaymen to describe the 16 remaining painters from the Fort ierce group. Mary Ann Carroll reactednegatively to the term at rst, because she thought it made them sound likerooks and robbers.Not to mention that they werent all men. But, as Garyonroe notes, You couldnt ask Madison TH, COURTESY OF MARY ANN CARROLL AMERICAN LEGACYALL 2005 Below, Mary Annarroll, and a serenetypical of her style. enue for a better moniker.After Monroe published his book, in2001, interest exploded. Current High-ymen no longer need to travel; art col-lectors come to them. Larger paintingsan fetch $10,000, and James Gibson hassold some for as much as $18,000. Gov-ernor Jeb Bush hung paintings of Gib-sons in the Florida Governors Gallery in 2003, declaring, Im a big fan of hisork. He can capture Florida in just a ighwaymen joined Backus as inducteesin the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.eople are still drawn tothese paintings because of theirunique style, which enlivens land-scape tradition with vigorous brushworklike that of the Abstract Expressionists.Crusty, rich, thick paint put down intui-tively, says Fitch. An isolated patch of an Alfred Hair painting can be an abstractou pull back to see a woman strugglingwith her laundry in the wind. The red of her sheets echoes the brilliant ow-fallen petals on the ground, pulling theomposition to the right, while on the lefta creamy sky promises calmer weather.Ann Carrolls works radiate likeark Rothko color-elds, with layeredblacks sliding into delicate oranges, butthey also evoke a land of immense beauty.She still tries to paint every day, and sheremains rooted in observing her sur-roundings. She says, I can see things andthey inspire me, and it just opens up likea book. She has come to accept the nameighwaymen and enjoys the continuedinterest in her work. I hear people usethe word , whatever that is. Butit really was a great happening, she says.She modestly concludes, It was an hon-est dollar for an honest days work.Elizabeth Hoovers article on Inman Page(Pathfinders: The Education Champion) ap-peared in the Spring 2004 issue.TH, COURTESY OF THE ESTATE OF ALFRED HAIR AMERICAN LEGACYALL 2005 lfred Hair, above,captured a windy day blowing clothes andlossoms falling from abrilliantly vermilliontree. He created suchscenes mostly frommemory, with nopreliminary sketches. PHOTO CREDIT when the cop stopped jamesGibson on the highway and asked why he, a black man, was driving such a niceof his Chevy and showed him his paint-ings of the Florida landscape. The po-liceman was so impressed with the ver-dant images and vibrant colors that hebought two before sending the youngman on his way.spectacular vacationland that was ex-periencing a real estate boom. Whileourists frolicked in the surf, the less arting in the 1950s, a group of self-taughtartists picked up palette knives and tubes ofpaint to create luminous landscapes of boomingsouthern Florida. With no gallery to showtheir work, they took it on the road. HIGHWAYMENThe ush dreamscapes byivingston Roberts(left) and JamesGibson. These two andthose that follow areAMERICAN LEGACYALL 2005ELIZABETH HOOVER