Dancing Figures by Richard Bruce Nugent
Dancing Figures by Richard Bruce
Poetic Justice Alim Smith – Yesterday Nite
I enjoyed this story so much that during college I almost got a tattoo of "poetic justice" in Arabic on my lower back. You know the kind and please don't ask me why? Why not? And Arabic? It was a phase and the written language so lovely. And I still don't have any tattoos but that's not what this is about!
Art History: Ernest Watson
I think it was summer when I first saw a painting by Ernest Watson. My brothers and I were staying with cousins in Texas, traveling from one cousins house to another, staying up all night watching movies and running through thick green grass under the piercing hot sun. Every few minutes someone would run back…
Time to Rest, Paint Brushes Down
It's so hard for me to just stop and rest. Even now I'm writing this blog, but you know what I mean, right? At least I hope so.
The Package Arrived: Art Shipment Update
I forgot to update you guys about this but that art package I sent to my grandmother arrived!
Lipstick Speed Painting
Speed Painting of Lipstick & My thoughts and experience with filming my work. Learning to let go, enjoy the process and PAINT....because that’s what it’s really about.
Packaging & Shipping Art (16 inches by 20 inches)
Packaging a 16 inch by 20 inch canvas sounds easy to say but with two small children, a husband and working overnights, what should have been a seemingly small task to complete turned into....something much more time consuming and I'm so glad I did some test shipping.
Beach Landscape Painting – Upcycled Art
Here is one of the upcycled large canvases I added to our living room. Before the beach scene, the canvas was an abstract art piece. I was exploring colors and shapes. See the next images. I was completely filled with joy that I was able to create such a large art work. And I became…
Richard Powell- Art & Art History
Richard J. Powell is John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art & Art History at Duke University, where he has taught since 1989. He studied at Morehouse College and Howard University before earning his doctorate in art history at Yale University. Along with teaching courses in American art, the arts of the African Diaspora, and contemporary visual studies, he has written extensively on topics ranging from primitivism to postmodernism, including such titles as Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson (1991), Black Art: A Cultural History (1997 & 2002), and Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (2008).[1]
Portrait Studies
The portrait below is my seventh of the same one, it's not complete but it does get a little better each time. My peer's critiques don't sting as much and my ability to focus while painting has increased. I'm practicing patience which is like pulling teeth, but I think this is my take away. I always want it right now but that's not how life works and with creating art and writing I'm slowly learning....patience. I don't know the ending of this journey but I am enjoying the ride and I'm enjoying sharing it with you.
Architecture Studies
When I was younger I would stare at the ceiling imagining gravity dropping and floating upwards placing my feet onto the surface and walking around. It was a fun past time. I did the same daydreaming at LAX airport recently however this time I took a few photos.
Neptune Thurston – Portrait Painter
It was even discovered that Neptune Thurston taught artist, Gilbert Stuart how to paint heads and faces.**
“My Soul Has Grown Deep”
My Soul Has Grown Deep considers the art-historical significance of contemporary Black artists and quilters working throughout the southeastern United States and Alabama in particular. See sources for more Information.
Thornton Dial – Artist
"Art is strange-looking stuff and most people don’t understand art. Most people don’t understand my art, the art of the Negroes, because most people don’t understand me, don’t understand the Negroes at all. If everybody understand one another, wouldn’t nobody make art. Art is something to open your eyes. Art is for understanding." ~Thornton Dial [1]
Eartha Kitt (From “Anna Lucasta”) by Charles White
In a recent blog post about Dr. Kellie Jones, I found this art work by Charles White one of the artist discussed in South of Pico. I absolutely love Eartha Kitt and had to know more about this artwork.
Read more Eartha Kitt (From “Anna Lucasta”) by Charles White
South of Pico by Kellie Jones
In South of Pico Kellie Jones explores how the artists in Los Angeles's black communities during the 1960s and 1970s created a vibrant, productive, and engaged activist arts scene in the face of structural racism. Emphasizing the importance of African American migration, as well as L.A.'s housing and employment politics, Jones shows how the work of black Angeleno artists such as Betye Saar, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Senga Nengudi spoke to the dislocation of migration, L.A.'s urban renewal, and restrictions on black mobility.
Chorus Lines, Rhythm & Blues: Artist Archibald J. Motley Jr.
I think I’ve fallen in love with this art piece. Excerpt from Nasher, Motley was 70 years old when he painted the oil on canvas, Hot Rhythm, in 1961. This painting explores one of Motley’s favorite subjects, the jazz age. The artist loved to walk the streets of Bronzeville, a once-thriving neighborhood in Chicago’s South…
Read more Chorus Lines, Rhythm & Blues: Artist Archibald J. Motley Jr.
“Glory” inspires Quiet Pride: The Elizabeth Catlett Project
Elizabeth Catlett's "Glory" inspires music. The sculptures of the late African-American artist and civil rights activist Elizabeth Catlett are the inspiration for a new jazz composition. Rufus Reid, a bass musician who's been playing jazz for half a century, uses Catlett's artwork to explore the intersection between music and the visual arts. In his new project, called "Quiet Pride," Reid tries to convey Catlett's sculptures in sound. [1]
Read more “Glory” inspires Quiet Pride: The Elizabeth Catlett Project
“Singing Head” by Elizabeth Catlett
Elizabeth Catlett, Singing Head, 1980, black Mexican marble, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 16 x 9 1/2 x 12 in. (40.7 x 24.2 x 30.5 cm.)
“Untitled” New Orleans Series by Gwendolyn Knight, 1941
"Untitled" New Orleans Series by Gwendolyn Knight, 1941
Read more “Untitled” New Orleans Series by Gwendolyn Knight, 1941
Marilyn Nance – Artist & Photojournalist
Marilyn Nance is a photojournalist who goes her own way. She wants to tell the truth, particularly about her own community whom she calls ordinary working class Black folks. She follows her instincts, leading her down paths beyond still photography. Marilyn noted in a lecture at the Library of Congress, ". . . the commercial media often has no interest in showing the images that I feel need to be shown."1
Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence – Artist
Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence's first formal study of art came at Howard University, where she studied with the painter Lois Maillou Jones and with printmaker James Lesesne Wells. During the Harlem Renaissance, Knight became a daily participant in the workshop of sculptor Augusta Savage, director of the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts and later of the Harlem Community Arts Center. Throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, Knight became an itinerant artist of sorts, accompanying her husband, Jacob Lawerence, as he pursued new opportunities.
Clementine Hunter – Folk Artist
Clementine Hunter is celebrated for her use of bold colors and shapes to narrate plantation life in 19th and 20th century Louisiana as an African American. Clementine Hunter is Louisiana’s most famous female artist, and she is one of the most important folk artists of all time.
Her work can be seen in the Smithsonian Institute, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Museum of American Folk Art in New York, the High Museum of Atlanta, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, the New York Historical Association, the Oprah Winfrey Collection in Chicago and many other museums and private collections across the country.[1]
Dr. Selma Burke – Sculptor
Some of Burke’s most notable sculptures include Temptation (1938), Despair (1951), Fallen Angel(1958), Mother and Child (1968), and Together (1975). A nine-foot statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. she completed while in her eighties is on display in Marshall Park in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received numerous awards and honors which included three honorary doctorate degrees. In 1979 Burke was recognized by President Jimmy Carter for her contribution to African American art history.[4]
Augusta Savage – Sculptor
In the 1920s Augusta Savage received commissions to create portrait busts of W.E.B. Du Bois and black nationalist Marcus Garvey; both pieces were hailed for their power and dynamism. On the strength of these works and especially the poignant Gamin (1929)—a portrait bust of a streetwise boy and one of Savage’s few extant pieces—she received a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship that enabled her finally to study in Paris in 1929–31.**
Senga Nengudi – Artist
Senga Nengudi emerged as part of a group of avant-garde African-American artists active in Los Angeles and New York in the 1970s and 1980s.
Edmonia Lewis – Sculptor
Edmonia Lewis was the first sculptor of African American and Native American descent to achieve international recognition. In addition to creating portrait heads, Lewis sculpted biblical scenes and figural works dealing with her Native American heritage and the oppression of black people.*
Valerie Mercer – Curator
Valerie Mercer's curatorial work shines a light on Detroit's black art history for the world to see and experience.
