Ellis Wilson
Depression Era Black Kentucky Artist
My project
or plan doesn’t take much telling. I want to paint! … There is so much to paint
and so little time.”
—Ellis Wilson, 1941
—Ellis Wilson, 1941
This pic is pretty rough but it is the one I was sure was Ellis Wilson.
Ellis Wilson
may be Kentucky’s most famous artist no one knows about. Born in Mayfield, Graves County, Kentucky in
1899 and died in 1977, Wilson is not even well known in his hometown even
though he has works in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, North Carolina
Museum of Art, and Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, among others. He was educated at what is known today at
Kentucky State University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
He grew up
in a segregated world and sought a career not open to him as a black man at the
time. But he did not let that stop
him. I learned about Ellis Wilson while
watching at KET special on public television and was intrigued by his strong desire
to paint and learn and create regardless of where it took him or what he had to
do without in order to paint.
In his
lifetime, Wilson painted black America as they worked and lived. He made acceptable that genre of painting at
a time when he couldn’t use a public restroom or drink from a public water
fountain. He was a prolific painter with
hundreds of works, many of which are not known where they are.
Wilson left
Kentucky after going to Kentucky State for two years because the only courses
of study there were education or agriculture.
He wanted to paint, so he headed to Chicago to study at the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago. He
graduated from there and stayed there for a number of years working at odd jobs
and painting.
Wilson moved
to Harlem in New York where he found the culture of art and music there to be
stimulating and inspiring. He worked on
the WPA during the depression as an artist alongside many other artists as they
painted signs and murals for cities and other WPA projects.
After
applying for several years for a Guggenheim fellowship he was finally awarded
one in 1944 and spent those two years traveling in the south drawing and
sketching and painting “Negroes” as they went about their everyday lives.
“I am most interested in painting
the Negro. Unfortunately, this type of painting hasn’t a large following at
present. I am desirous of both making a name for myself in the Art World and to
create paintings which will be a credit to my Race and my time….” Wilson said.
I love Wilson’s statement that he
wanted to be a credit to his race and his time.
Throughout 1944 and 1945, he
produced a series of paintings capturing both the vitality and the quiet
dignity of Southern black people. In Georgia, he painted men making turpentine;
in South Carolina, workers cutting trees and planing lumber. During a visit
back home to Mayfield, he painted farm hands in a tobacco field, workers in
clay mines, and the famous Wooldridge Monuments in the town cemetery—which, he
later told an interviewer, had “scared the britches off of me” as a child. (An excerpt from an article by Eva F. King.)
In 1952 he won $3000 in the annual
Terry Art Exhibition in Miami for a painting of a Carolina island woman
carrying a large fish in her hands and one on her head. With that prize money he traveled to Haiti
where he was surprised to find a black majority country. He loved the sounds, colors and artistry of
Haiti and returned several times painting.
It was during his Haiti trips that his art began to transform into
almost an abstract version of his former representational style. He began to paint black people in dark silhouette
with no facial features and clothes almost in geometric shapes without folds or
much form. He made several trips to
Haiti to enjoy the tropical culture and paint the beauty he saw there.
In 1947 Wilson had his first public
show in his hometown in the Mayfield Public Library. He had a show at Murray State College before
blacks could be admitted as students there.
It was because of this show that years later after Wilson’s work fell
out of favor that curator Albert Sperath came across some of his work at the
college and was intrigued and began his research of Wilson’s work and set out
on a quest to find and catalogue all of his work. He has found nearly 100 of his works, but knows
many more are out there. Sperath’s work
to find Wilson’s work was the basis for the KET show I saw.
In a serendipitous turn of events,
in 1985, 8 years after his death, Wilson’s painting Funeral Procession found its way onto the set of the Bill Cosby
Show where it remained for eight years.
That one event brought a resurgence of interest in Wilson’s work.
Sadly, Wilson lived a solitary life
and he never was quite able to realize his dream of making a living with his
art. When he died in 1977 he was buried
in an unmarked paupers grave and no one knows where.
As I prepared to write this post, I
read many interviews given by Wilson and what surprised me was his always
upbeat outlook regardless of his situation.
He used words like wonderful and glorious in describing various times in
his life when I’m sure it would be difficult to find the wonderful or
glorious.
I hope you have enjoyed reading
about Kentucky artist Ellis Wilson and his passion for painting. We should all have such drive, determination
and sheer love of the work we do.
I hope you have enjoyed learning about Ellis Wilson as much as I have. I love his story.
The KET documentary about Wilson's life can be found at this link.
Other information was gleaned from thesesources.
Eva F. King is a member of the
Graves County Art Guild.
In addition to named sources, quotes
in this biography were drawn from The History of African American Artists.
Harry Henderson interviewed Ellis Wilson for the first edition of that book in
the mid-1970s.
Hopefully you found this Famous Artist Friday post about Ellis Wilson educational as well as uplifting. If you don't receive my blog in your inbox, maybe now is the perfect time to scroll to the top right and put your email in the box that says subscribe to my blog. I would love it if you would share this with anyone you think would be interested.
Have a great day.
Yea - someone I did not know!
ReplyDeleteWhat a fascinating article. I was familiar with the Funeral Procession painting but nothing about the artist. Thank you Sharon. I enjoyed learning about him very much.
Wow! I am so happy I was able to share Ellis Wilson with you. It was so interesting learning all about him and his art. Like so many artists, Ellis had more success after his life to a serendipitous event. Thanks for the great comment.
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