#blackartist — Public Fediverse posts

Bessie Harvey (1929-1994)

https://palianshow.wordpress.com/2026/10/11/bessie-harvey/

By the first African American artist to receive national & international recognition: Robert S. Duncanson (1821–1872), Minneopa Falls, 1862, oil on canvas, Cincinnati Art Museum. A nearly identical work is in the Milwaukee Art Museum. #blackart #blackartist #blackartists #BlackHistory #art

Character designs for my #animated #series The Breadcrumb Diaries! :ablobblewobble:

#MastoArt #Monsterdon #BlueSky #BlackSky #BlackArtist #Animation #Animated #Blerd #EchoPenn #QueerArt #Sapphic #SapphicMigration #SapphicArt #Draw #Sketch #Sketchbook #OC #Characterart #CharacterDesign #Art #Artwork #Artist #echopenndraws #BlackArt #DrawingWhileBlack #ConceptArt #2dArtist #ArtistonMastodon #Traditionalart #Unfinished #UnfinishedArt #UnfinishedArtwork #SapphicSeptember #Sapphic

By Joseph Holston (born 1944), Jazz, 1990, screenprint, 27 7⁄8 x 20 inches (70.8 x 50.8 cm), © 1990 Joseph Holston. #BlackArt #Blackartist #blackhistory #printmaking

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Holston's subjects are African-Americans, often engaged in the activities of daily life. While his figures are simplified and abstracted, they're imbued with dignity, and their societal identities are recognizable, from business-suited commuter to homemaker.
Underlying their narrative roles, at times competitive with them, is the paint, pulsing at the edge of line's restraint, frequently tactile, just short of becoming an entity of its own. One could cite the influence of the Fauves, Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence, who was a mentor — but in the end, Holston's handling of color and composition is consistently and uniquely his own.” ~ by Mary Thomas, “Vivid, subtle works show strong emotion in SAMA exhibits,” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 31, 2006.

A portrait of “Lead Belly” Ledbetter by Charles White (1918-1979), “Good Night Irene,” 1952, oil on canvas, 47 × 24 inches (119.38 × 60.96 cm), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO. #art #arthistory #blackart #blackartist #blackartists #BlackHistory

From the gallery label: “Charles Wilbert White created this portrait three years after the legendary musician’s death. He painted Lead Belly in his prime playing a popular late-1800s folk song that he was the first to record in 1933. In addition to celebrating an icon of American music, Goodnight Irene is a key example of White’s socially conscious art. White aimed to affirm the humanity and beauty of African Americans throughout his career. Goodnight Irene highlights the artist’s ability to invest his subjects with steadfast dignity and universal resonance.”

By Ernie Barnes (1938-2009), “Club 55,” acrylic and oil on canvas, ca. 1990/1994, 41 ⅝ by 53 ¼ inches (105.7 by 135.3 cm), photo: Sotheby’s New York, 28 September 2023, ©️Estate of Ernie Barnes. #art #blackartist #blackartists

“There is a great humanity in Barnes’ vision. The more obvious interpretation is that he is intent upon portraying the deep significance of mankind. But on a subtle level he is a purveyor of what Joseph Campbell calls “bliss,” that rapturous state of being attainable by those who commit their intelligence and their imagination to an ideal.” ~ Joan d’Arcy

By African-American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937), The Banjo Lesson, 1893, oil on canvas, 49x35.5 inches (124.4x90.1 cm), Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. #arthistory #BlackHistory #blackartist #blackartists #painting #oilpainting

From Khan Academy: “Henry Ossawa Tanner was the United States’ first African-American celebrity artist. His training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (under the guidance of Thomas Eakins) and at the Académie Julian in Paris (with Jean-Léon Gérôme) put him in the unique position of having experienced two vastly different approaches to painting— American Realism and French academic painting. He was also one of the few artists to have had such training at a time when there were many barriers to education for African-Americans. Though Tanner lived most of his life in France and became well known for his lush biblical paintings, The Banjo Lesson is his most famous work and the painting that has become emblematic with his oeuvre.” ~ Farisa Khalid, “Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson,” Khan Academy.

Wilhelmina Godfrey (1914-1994)

https://palianshow.wordpress.com/2026/08/27/mcalpin-godfrey/

By African/Cuban-American artist Harmony Rosales (born in Chicago, 1984). #oilpainting #painting #BlackArt #blackartist #womanartist #portrait #portraitpainting #portraiture

Her description on her Facebook and Instagram accounts: “I’ve been heads down with a new body of work.

Experimenting with different grounds and allowing parts of the image to remain unfinished.

This painting began with Portrait of a Lady with her Servant (c. 1694–95), and my interest in the liveried servant in European portraiture.

I kept returning to the power of portraiture: how a painting can tell us who was considered worthy of being remembered, while reducing another person to evidence of someone else’s status.

I wanted to disturb that hierarchy.

The figure once positioned as an accessory to the portrait now occupies it entirely and possessing the space around her.

Maybe the question is no longer who she served, but who she might have been when no one else was defining her.”

The artist’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/honeiee/?hl=en

By African-American artist Sargent Claude Johnson (1888-1967), “Chester,” 1930, painted terracotta, (Don Ross / Estate of Sargent Claude Johnson). #art #arthistory #sculpture #Blackart #Blackartist

From the art critic Christopher Knight, the Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2024: “Sargent’s father, a white man of Swedish descent, died when the boy was not yet 10. His Black and Indigenous mother succumbed from tuberculosis just a few years later…

The first wave of the Great Migration that saw millions of Black Americans leave the rural South for the increasingly urban North and West was instrumental in creating the Harlem Renaissance. Given the name, we usually think of it as a New York phenomenon, but Johnson lived and worked in the Bay Area throughout his creative life. (He arrived in 1915 and died nearly penniless in 1967.)”

By Trinidadian-American actor/dancer/musician/director/choreographer/artist Geoffrey Holder (1930-2014), portrait of his wife, actress/choreographer/dancer Carmen de Lavallade, 1976, oil on canvas, 61 × 40 ½ inches (framed). #arthistory #blackhistory #blackartists #blackart #blackartist #painting #oilpainting

From James Fuentes Gallery: “The artist’s oeuvre demonstrates a deep interest in representing the totality of black life, registered here in compositions that move from the quiet intimacy of bedrooms and parlors to the lively energy encountered in city streets and nightclubs. Anchored in portraiture, at times Holder’s images are also steeped in religious iconography and a bold reverence for nature—consummately rendered in such a way that they appear at once contemporary, historical, and thus timeless…

Holder’s attunement to beauty imbued much of his portraiture with a mysterious quality—likely amplified by the fact that most of his figures were painted from imagination rather than life. Holder engaged the body as if it were a paintbrush or pen; his choreography resembled movements like brushstrokes and, in turn, his paintings reflected an intimate physical sensibility. For Holder, painting provided fertile terrain for his astonishing experimentations in style, representation, and expression. To this day, Holder’s work remains as contemporary as when it was made.”

Your art history post for today: by 19th century African American artist Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901), Sunset Scene, ca. 1875-1885, oil on wood, 10 3⁄4 x 18 7⁄8 in. (27.2 x 48.0 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum. #art #blackart #blackartist #blackhistory

From the museum; “Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828–1901) lived by the sea for most of his life, and many of his paintings, including Sunset Scene, feature boats or bodies of water. Here, the glowing oranges and yellows immediately draw us into the center of the image, highlighting the indistinct trees and buildings in the background. Bannister's intimate views of the American landscape contrast with the large vistas of mountains and canyons painted by many of his contemporaries. This picturesque scene, in which nature is shown as passive and calm, is typical of Bannister's work.”

Tammy photographs one of the mixed media sculptures in the current "Sharif Bey: Homecoming" Show at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. #andywarhol #andywarholmuseum #theandywarholmuseum #thewarhol #thewarholmuseum #artist #artists #arting #makingart #artwork #artworks #sculpture #sculptures #sharifbey #sharifbeyhomecoming #homecoming #mixedmedia #pittsburgh #pittsburghart #vacation #vacations #holiday #holidays #vacationday #blackartist #blackartists #city #citylife #photography

Your art history post for today: by African-American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), Daniel in the Lions' Den (1907-1918), oil on paper mounted on canvas, 41 1/8 × 49 15/16 in. (104.46 × 126.84 cm), LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art. #arthistory #blackartist #blackart #painting #oilpainting #blackhistory

From LACMA Untamed, January 4, 2017: “Henry Ossawa Tanner became known for his quiet, subtle depictions of Biblical stories. Where his contemporaries and forbearers often created dramatic scenes of similar subject matters, Tanner’s work tells a different story.

Daniel in the Lions’ Den offers a quiet, contemplative moment in an otherwise terrifying scene. Daniel, a Jewish prophet persecuted for his faith, was sent to certain death in a den of wild lions. His captors discovered him alive and unharmed the next day. A shaft of light illuminates the center of the scene, but Daniel’s face is obscured. He and the lions are cloaked in a blue-green shadow. The focus, rather than on Daniel’s face, is drawn to his bound hands and the face of a docile lion, the only things illuminated in this work.

Tanner’s calm interpretation of the story of Daniel conveys a man of faith, secure in and protected by his belief, not one fervently praying in fear. The subtlety of the painting conveys Daniel’s humanity and his faith on the same level, showing him alone but accompanied by the almost heavenly beam of light.”

By African-American artist Augusta Savage (1892-1962), "Lift Every Voice and Sing, installed at the 1939 World's Fair in NYC. Savage had no room to store it, and it was smashed by bulldozers during the fair’s cleanup despite its popularity. 😢 #art #blackart #blackartist #womanartist #BlackHistory

The 16 foot tall sculpture depicts 12 Black singers, who represent the strings on a harp, fronted by a Black man holding a sheet of music. "Lift Every Voice and Sing, lyrics by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938), music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954). This hymn has become known as The Negro National Anthem. It begins: “Lift every voice and sing, 'Til earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise High as the list'ning skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us; Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on 'til victory is won.”

Your art history post for today: by African-American artist Charles White (1918–1979), “General Moses and Sojourner Truth,” 1954, wolff carbon pencil and white chalk over traces of graphite pencil, 27 7/8 in x 38 inches, Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, ©The Charles White Archives. #arthistory #blackart #blackartist #BlackHistory #drawing

From the museum: ‘Charles White’s 1954 drawing General Moses and Sojourner Truth, represents two famed African American women who fought for equality in different ways. Harriet Tubman is presented in the guise of “General Moses,” grasping a staff like the one Moses used to part the Red Sea. The intellectual nature of Sojourner Truth’s writings and speeches in support of abolitionism and women’s rights is suggested through her upward gaze, in contrast to Tubman’s direct engagement with the viewer.’

By Grace Lynne Haynes (b. 1992), "Sojourner Truth, Founding Mother," cover of The New Yorker, Aug. 3 & Aug. 10, 2020. #art #blackartist #blackart #womanartist #womenartists #BlackHistory

From the artist (found on the CNN website, dated, August 5, 2020: “My portrait of Truth is based off of existing black-and-white photos of her, but I interpreted them in a playful, modern way. She wears the shawl and cap she was often pictured in, but in vibrant colors and textiles of my own imagination. She sits at a table next to a lively plant rising upwards from a vase while hummingbirds flit around her. I often include hummingbirds in my paintings as a tribute to my grandmother, who grew up in the South and dealt with racism and sexism as a Black woman.”

By Aaron Douglas (1899-1979), "Harriet Tubman," 1931, oil on canvas, 54 × 72" (137.1 X 182.9 cm), Bennett College, Greensboro, N.C. #arthistory #blackhistory #blackhistory #blackart #blackartist #art #painting #oilpainting

From the Camden Civil Rights Project: 'Douglas uses modernist imagery to depict the slave era heroine, Harriet Tubman, who was responsible for leading more than three hundred slaves to freedom by way of the Underground Railroad. Douglas wrote that he portrayed Tubman "as a heroic leader breaking the shackles of bondage and pressing on toward a new day." Behind her and stretching back symbolically to Africa are the black men and women who toiled and prayed through three hundred years of servitude. "The group of figures to the right... symbolizes the newly liberated people as laborers and heads of families. The last figure symbolizes the dreamer who looks out towards higher and nobler vistas, the modern city, for his race. He represents the preachers, teachers, artists, and musicians of the group. The beam of light that cuts through the center of the picture symbolizes divine inspiration.”’

By Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe (born in Accra, Ghana; now lives & works in Portland, Oregon), “Akwete," 2021, oil on canvas, 40 × 30 inches (101.6x76.2 cm), Rubell Museum, Miami, ©️ Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe. #art #blackart #blackartist #blackartists

More info on the artist in ALT.

By African-American artist Charles White (1918–1979), detail & the full work, Homage to Sterling Brown, 1972, oil on canvas, full work: 40 × 60 in. (101.6 × 152.4 cm), Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin. The closeup is a personal photo. #blackartist #blackartists #art #arthistory

By African-American artist Sedrick Huckaby (born 1975), “Opal Lee” (born 1926), 2023, oil on canvas, 152.4 × 101.6 × 4.4 cm (60 × 40 inches), National Portrait Gallery USA. Opal Lee is known as “The Grandmother of Juneteenth.” In June 2021, President Joe Biden signed a federal bill that nationally recognized the holiday. Lee was in attendance.

Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article266903351.html#storylink #blackartist #Juneteenth

From Kaysie Ellingson, “The art of connection: Sedrick Huckaby's creative legacy,” KERA, February 27, 2026: “Huckaby is known for his striking, large-scale portraits, where thick, layered brush strokes, capture the intensity in the faces he details, providing an intimate glimpse into their lives. Collectively, his portraits tell larger, nuanced stories of struggle, celebration and community.

His work has gained global acclaim, with works in many major museums and institutions.”

By African American artist Romare Bearden (1911−1988), Guitar Magic, 1986, collage & watercolor on board, The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC. © 2025 Romare Bearden Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society. #art #blackart #blackartist #blackartists #collage

From the Bearden Foundation: ‘Bearden takes us backstage to the glamour, grit, and grace of Black performance. Bearden understood that jazz wasn’t just sound. It was a repository of memory—a form of Black historical consciousness. The improvisational nature of jazz mirrored the adaptability required of Black Americans, who had to continuously remake identity and community in the face of change and displacement. Much of Bearden’s art functions the same way. His collages are full of migrating trains, front porches, street corners, and jukeboxes—images loaded with the weight of history. In these works, jazz becomes a stand-in for cultural endurance. He once said, “The artist has to be something like a whale, swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs.” Bearden devoured both visual and musical traditions, then recombined them in ways that felt utterly new.’

By Geoffrey Holder (1930-2014), “Carmen,” oil on masonite board, ca. 1960, 47 1/2 x 36 in. (120.7 x 91.4 cm.), photo: Swann Auction Galleries, April 2, 2026. #arthistory #blackart #blackartist #painting #oilpainting

From the auction listing: “Geoffrey Holder was born in Trinidad in 1930 and moved to New York City in 1952 after being invited to teach choreography at the Katherine Dunham School of Dance. By 1954, he had his first successful one-man show in New York at the Barone Gallery and won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in 1956. Despite his talent as a painter, Holder is best known as an actor and dancer. He was a principal dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet from 1955-56. He also had many roles as an actor and was featured in such movies as Doctor Dolittle (1967), Live and Let Die (1973), and 7 Up commercials. He was also a costume designer for Prodigal Prince (1967), The Wizard of Oz (1975), and Firebird (1982). His artwork has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Museum of the City of New York, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and the Barbados Museum.”

Your art history post for today: by African-American artist Laura Wheeler Waring (1887-1948), Woman with Bouquet, ca. 1940, oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum. #arthistory #blackartists #blackartist #blackart #womanartist #womenartists

From the museum: “With hand on hip and confident bearing, this woman is self-assured and elegant. She was probably from the Philadelphia area, where the artist Laura Wheeler Waring lived and worked. Like Waring’s other portraits of sophisticated or dignified working-class African Americans, this painting countered the many racial stereotypes that were prevalent at the time. Waring’s work, with its strong color palette and energetic brushwork, flourished during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, a period of great African American artistic and cultural production.”

By Nigerian artist Wole Lagunju (born 1966), Black Girl V (Ibori), 75 x 57.5 inches, oil on canvas, 2025, ©️ Wole Lagunju. #art #blackartist #blackartists #AfricanArt #africanartists #africanartist

From Montague Contemporary: “Wole Lagunju practices a visually stunning form of Onaism, wherein he appropriates Western cultural artifacts and combines them with Yoruba cultural artifacts, notably Gelede masks, to challenge the audience to consider how we often look at culture through a Western lens.

The Gelede masquerade is a performance celebrating motherhood, fertility, and femininity - and combining these themes with Western cultural icons, he evolves our understanding of the role of Yoruba culture - and broadly African art - to reframe our perspective.⁣ Sampling from a wide variety of cultural iconography across history - from Dutch Golden to Elizabethan to fifties Americana to Nigerian adiré batik - Lagunju’s paintings are both fashionable but also imbued with layers of inspiration and meaning.

Lagunju’s cultural references, mined from the eras of colonization and decolonization of the African continent critique the racial and social structures of the 19th century whilst evoking commentaries on power, femininity and womanhood.
Wole Lagunju is a 1986 graduate of Fine arts and graphic design at the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. Lagunju has exhibited widely in Nigeria, United States, Europe, and the Caribbean.

His works are included in various private and public art collections including the Denver Art Museum, St Louis Art Museum, the Toledo Art Museum, The Virginia Museum of Fine Art (promised), the World Bank, the Norval Foundation, The United States Art in Embassy Collection in Nigeria, the Africa First Collection, the Ashley Longshore Collection, the Mack Collection, the Glasser Collection, the Chinn Collection, amongst others.”

By African-American artist Manet Harrison Fowler, Still life with flowers and Tuskegee pennant, 1966, watercolor on paper, 17 3/4 × 14 1/2 inches, photo: Swann Galleries, March 24, 2022. #art #blackart #blackartist #womanartist #womenartists

From the gallery: "Manet Harrison Fowler (1895-1976) was a Texas native and 1913 graduate of the Tuskegee Institute who later studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and toured the country as a soprano opera singer. She brought the Mwalim Center for African Culture to Harlem in 1932, and became an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance.”

By Kehinde Wiley (born 1977), “Shantavia Beale II,” 2012, oil on canvas, 60x48 inches, private collection. #blackart #blackartist #blackartists #oilpainting #painting

From the Saint Louis Art Museum: “Kehinde Wiley’s vibrant paintings actively engage with the traditions of European art. In his work, Wiley replaces historical depictions of white figures with images of contemporary African Americans, Africans, and people of the African diaspora. His work is widely recognized for calling attention to significant absences and erasures in Western art history, exposing the lack of representation of black individuals in figurative painting.”

https://www.europesays.com/africa/216329/ New group exhibition at Art of Contemporary Africa SF #Africa #AfricanArt #AfricanArtist #BlackArtist #FemaleArtist

Your art history post for today: by African-American artist Charles Ethan Porter (1847–1923), Floral Still Life, ca. 1880-1890, oil on canvas, 16 1/8 × 20 3/8 × 13/16 inches (41 × 51.8 × 2 cm), Detroit Institute of Arts. #ArtHistory #blackart #blackartists #blackartist #BlackHistory

Information on the artist from the National Gallery of Art: ‘In 1881 Porter decided to travel abroad to continue his development as an artist…

Less than two years into his time in France, Porter’s money ran out. He wrote to Mark Twain, asking him for help. His letters to the writer are the only known first-person accounts from Porter. On April 4, 1883, he wrote:

Now I am aware that there are a goodly number of my Hartford friends and others who are anxious to see how the colored artist will make out, but this is not the motive which impresses me. There is something of more importance. The colored people—my people—as a race I am interested in, and my success will only add to others who have already shown wherein they are capable the same as other men.

Conscious of his place in an art world dominated by white men, Porter was eager to show what he, and other Black artists, could do.’

By African American artist Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007), “The First Sunday after Easter.” It appears to be pen, ink, & brush, with watercolor. Crite may be the first American artist to present Jesus, Mary and the Apostles as black. #blackart #blackartist #easter #arthistory #art

Barbara Walker

https://palianshow.wordpress.com/2025/06/23/barbara-walker/