A world without color seems dead
Quotes and Black Art | Thursdaysº
Quotes and Black Art
Your Curated Art Museum
“Come for the art, stay for the quotes.”
“The funny part of it was she was willing to trust them and their motives without questioning, but the instant they saw the color of her skin they knew what she must be.”
— Ann Petry, The Street
A Snippet:
Did you know that Ann Petry was the first African-American woman to sell over one million copies of her first novel, The Street, in 1946?
Learn more . . .
70. “Black Jesus”
“The benefit to being an artist is that I am my own business, my brand. Wherever I go, my talents come with me.”
— Calvin Clausell Jr.
Did you know?
Did you know that Calvin Clausell Jr. began oil painting in 2016 after reading the book “The Artist’s Way” - an influential text that helped reshape his perspective as an artist, specifically in branching out and trying other mediums?
Growing up in Los Angeles, art has always been first for Clausell Jr., including from childhood, where he found himself sketching every chance he got.
Loving the idea of bringing life to paper, he gravitated towards charcoal and graphite. Teaching himself shading techniques by observing human expression and emotion. However, he continues to expand on ideas and techniques, for example, shooting film photography and, “bringing images to life on canvas.”
71. “The Righteous And The Wise And Their Works Are In The Hand Of God” (2016)
“What I see in my head, it’s always different then what is fully fleshed out, and a lot of times what comes out is much better than what I had in my head.”
— Stephen Towns
Did you know?
Did you know that Stephen Towns (Baltimore, Maryland) is a painter and fiber artist whose work explores how American history influences contemporary society, and whose paintings have been subject to controversy (Joy Cometh In The Morning) given their depictions of enslaved Blacks whose lives were lost as a result of Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion?
Originally from South Carolina, Towns received a Bachelor of Fine Art in painting from the University of South Carolina.
His work has been exhibited in several venues, including: the National Museum of African American History, Baltimore Museum of Art, Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Art+ Practice, York College of PA, and is in the private collection of The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Baltimore Museum of Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Flint Institute of Arts, Petrucci Family Foundation, Art + Practice and private collections nationally and abroad.
72. “The Eclipse” (1970)
“Man’s highest aspirations come from nature. A world without color would seem dead. Color is life.”
— Alma Thomas
Did you know?
Did you know that Alma Woodsey Thomas was an African-American artist and teacher who lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century—best known for the ‘exuberant’, colorful, abstract paintings that she created after her retirement from a 35-year career teaching art at Washington’s Shaw Junior High School?
Thomas began painting seriously in the 1960s, when she retired from her thirty-eight year career as an art teacher in the public schools of Washington, D.C.
In the years that followed she would come to be regarded as a major painter of the Washington Color School art movement.
Born on September 22, 1891, in Columbus, Georgia, Thomas was the eldest of four daughters. Her father worked in a church and her mother was a seamstress and homemaker. In 1907, when Thomas was fifteen years old, her father moved the family to Washington, D.C.
She enrolled in Howard University, and in 1924 became the first graduate of its newly formed art department. Thomas’s teacher and mentor, James V. Herring, granted her use of his private art library, from which she gained a thorough background in art history. A decade later, she earned a Master of Arts degree in education from Columbia University.
“Color is life.”
(Breathe In . . . Breathe Out)
A world without color seems dead
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