Quarantine encourages out of the box thinking about black artists from the 1950s on Florida’s Treasure Coast.
Editor’s Note: To celebrate Black History Month, we’re reposting the series to African Americans who have had a major impact on Florida. This story was originally released in 2020.
Fort Pierce – Harold Newton did something brave.
In 1955, an African-American artist from Georgia in Newton walked the front door of a famous white artist’s house in Fort Pierce, Florida, asking the AE Bucks for advice.
“The Bucks had a reputation for being inclusive and open to people regardless of their beliefs, regardless of their beliefs, their beliefs, their gender,” said the executive at the AE Bucks Museum and Gallery in Fort Pierce. Director, J. Marshall Adams said. “The Bucks were very encouraging with his work, giving him critique, giving him demonstrations, and giving him art supplies to encourage him.”
Newton absorbed everything the Bucks had taught him.
We sell paintings along the highway
But Newton had one more hurdle to overcome if he wanted to sell his landscape paintings.
“He was unable to set up his own gallery, his own space in those separate times, and was able to attract white customers to a black studio, so he made his art into clients, clients. We had to find a way to guide us,” Adams said.
Newton’s Solution: We sell his paintings from his car alongside 1. The method has spread and has been adopted by more than dozens of artists in the region, leading to over 200,000 paintings and a vibrant African-American art scene up and down the Treasure Coast. The artist was later named: Highwaymen.
Alfred’s Hair Story
One of the artists considered the leader of the scene was Alfred Heirs. When his hair was 14, he, like Newton, fell into the Bucks track.
Hare went to a nearby quarantined school in Fort Pierce at Lincoln Park Academy. It was the hair teacher who suggested that Bucks take him under the wings.
Bucks taught me how to draw landscapes in my hair and how to make frames. Hair began to believe that he could turn his painting into a career.
“The only job you could get was to work in the fields, the orange groves that are your job,” said Doreta Hare Truthdell, widow of hair. “Alfred didn’t see him doing it. He said the painting is what I’m trying to do. This is my job. This is my employment.”
As his hair grew in the industry, he knew he had to do things differently than his white mentor.
So Hair came up with his own business model.
New business model
“What he could do was to lean towards his talent, and one of those talents was to paint quickly,” Adams said. “If he can learn how to paint faster and paint more volumes, he will sell more. He will sell them at a cheaper price range than established artists. You’re probably – but you’ll make a lot of money at the end of the day.”
Soon, Hare took a page from Newton’s playbook. He began driving up and down highways selling paintings.
That worked. Hair from the early 1960s and many other artists with similar styles of painting flourished.
“On October 16th, 1965, we moved from those paintings into the house we built,” said Hare Truthdell. “When we moved into that house, that’s when we really exploded. We can create about 20 paintings a day. We hired a sales person. One of the people who are currently highwaymen. The department was our sales representative. They sold for us, so we were making a lot of money in the meantime.”
The practice of selling art from hair and Newton’s cars has now become used by many African-American artists along the US one corridor on Florida’s Treasure Coast.
Many found success.
When everything changes
However, in 1970, the African-American art scene lost its charismatic leader when his hair was shot at a bar. He was 29 years old.
“All of the night will die,” said Hare’s widow. “There’s nothing left.”
Many African American landscape artists continued to paint, but combined with new preferences and styles in the 1970s and 1980s, throttling interest after the death of the hair, leaving most of their successes gone. .
“We survived it all,” Hare Truthdell said. “We are still alive. We are still standing, we have memories, and we always have Alfred’s memories of his vision.”
In the mid-1990s, Florida art historian Jim Fitch used the label to describe their art about the St. Petersburg Times’ African-American painting movement of the 1960s.
How the Highwayman turned out
“The term is ‘Highwayman’,” Adams said. “This name comes from the arteries in the US, one is the main way to sell artworks up and down. So, now there’s a term to describe these artists, it’s easy for us.”
This has sparked a new interest in their art, which is estimated to include 200,000 paintings.
One of the distinctive features that make Highwaymen Art unique is its landscape frames and vibrant colors.
Especially early on, they lacked resources and supplies, so hair and other things would be painted on the Upson board. They assembled the paintings with crown moldings, polished them with gold and silver, giving them a rustic look.
“I think the board we drew is really like that. I think it gave us the excitement of not getting from the canvas,” Hare Truthdell said. “We also shellaced the board and placed the sealant on the board, and then the paint just stuck to the sealant, and I think it gave it life.”
The true number of highway artists is being debated, and some people are considered second or third generation highways.
However, in 2004, the number of identified highways was set at 26, making him inducted into the Florida Artist Hall of Fame.
They include Curtis Arnett, Hezekiya Baker, Al “Black” Black, brothers Ellis Buckner and George Buckner, Robert Butler, Robert Butler, Mary Anne Carroll, Brothers Johnny Daniels and Rodney Dempson. , James Gibson, Alfred Heath, Isaac Knight, Robert Lewis, John Mayner, Roy McClendon, Alfonso “Pancho” Moran, brothers Sam Newton, Remuel Newton and Harold Newton, Willie Reagan, Livingston Castro” Roberts, Cornell “Pete” Smith, Charles Walker, Sylvester Wells, Charles “Chico” Wheeler.
“They may portray similar subjects in a similar way, but each have their own perspective,” Adams said. “I think it’s important to celebrate these individual artists and group groups. The collective narrative is really important, but the idea that these are individuals who look at the subject and paint in their own style. should not be vague; if you look closely you can see a wide variety of different perspectives on how you approach a single subject.”
The Highwayman paintings can be seen at the AE Bucks Gallery & Museum in Fort Pierce and at the Florida Museum of History in Tallahassee.
Many can be purchased on various websites in their honor.
There are also several works on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“It’s great that these artists are recognized today and that they continue to be recognized,” Adams said. “These works have a timeless beauty. They are at a certain time and the specific social and political and cultural that shaped how they were made and how people made them. They had the power to make them. They really talk beyond that.”
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