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Quotes and Black Art | Thursdaysº

Oct 10, 2024

Quotes and Black Art

Your Curated Art Museum

“Come for the art, stay for the quotes” . . .

“I say I don’t believe in nothing, except something about the way the night colors everything makes me want to.”
— Leila Mottley

A Snippet:

Did you know that at age sixteen, while a student at Oakland School of the Arts, Leila Mottley was chosen as Oakland’s 2018 Youth Poet Laureate?

As quoted in a 2018 Oakland Post article, Leila Mottley (already a literary dynamo with a passion for social justice) revealed her hope to use her Youth Poet Laureate title to address local issues in her beloved city of Oakland, stating, “I really want to focus on giving voice to the harrowing experience of displacement for youth in our communities, so I’m really excited to see what I can do.”

Learn more . . .

Leila Mottley - Nightcrawling

Jafari Joseph

August 8, 2024

Read full story

91. “The Wanderer” (1933)

“I don't think many cats know how to be alone because it requires this kind of concentration, and when you are alone what do you have to say? Do you have anything to say?”
— Norman Lewis

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Did you know?

Did you know that painter Norman Lewis (born in Harlem, July 23, 1909) first studied under the famous sculptor Augusta Savage—a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance?

During the Great Depression, Norman Lewis taught painting at the Harlem Community Art Center and painted works in the social realist style, depicting social topics like bread lines, evictions, and police brutality.

However, during the mid-40s, Lewis abandoned social realism, finding difficulty in the hypocrisy of the US fighting a racist enemy during the Second World War, while enforcing racial segregation of its own troops.

Having decided that painting, “Illustrative statements that merely mirrors some of the social conditions” was not an effective change agent, Lewis (around 1946), began experimenting with a more abstract aesthetic, establishing himself as a forerunner among Black abstract expressionists.

92. “In Memoriam” (2020)

“I describe my artistic style as bright and celebratory.”
— Ariel Sinha

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Did you know?

Did you know that Ariel Sinha's portraits honoring the lives of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd went viral in 2020?

BTW - who is Ariel Sinha?

Ariel Sinha is a multi-talented illustrator, comedian, musician, and human.

93. “Mother and Child” (circa 1932)

“It is the pure, American Negro I am concerned with . . . I wish to show that beauty not so much to the white man as to the Negro himself.”
— Sargent Johnson

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Did you know?

Did you know that Boston-born Sargent Johnson was one of the first African-American artists working in California to achieve national prominence, plus, the only West Coast artist considered part of the Harlem Renaissance?

Sargent Johnson was a painter, potter, ceramicist, printmaker, graphic artist, sculptor, and carver.

Born October 7, at age 28, Johnson moved to the San Francisco Bay area, marrying Pearl Lawson and studying drawing and painting at the California School of Fine Arts (the now defunct San Francisco Art Institute), where his teachers included sculptors Beniamino Bufano and Ralph Stackpole.

BTW - some of Sargent Johnson's public works can still be enjoyed at the Maritime Museum (in the Aquatic Park Bathhouse Building) in the city of San Francisco.