clementinehunterToday, I am highlighting a Louisiana native. She was well-known in our parts and for those who like art, you’re probably familiar with her already–Clementine Hunter (1887-1988).

I will highlight from several sources information about this dynamic painter. She not only painted, she made dolls, quilts, baskets, lace curtains, etc.  She reminds me of a very creative friend of mine–Peggy Eldridge Love.

One thing I learned about Clementine Hunter’s  story is that you’re never too old to pursue your dreams.

Hunter was born on Hidden Hill Plantation near Cloutierville, Louisiana; a place so isolated and harsh that local legend claimed it was the real-life inspiration for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. her family moved north to the Cane River area when she was a child, and eventually they moved to Melrose Plantation near Natchitoches, where Hunter spent a lot of her life picking cotton. She attended school for just 10 days and never learned to read or write.

But in the late 1940s, one of the many artists who visited the plantation left behind some tubes of paint. Plantation curator Francois Mignon encouraged Hunter to try her own hand at painting. During the next four decades, she created thousands of paintings.

It was often midnight before she was free to ”mark some pictures,” as she once said of her painting; using cardboard, paper bags, lumber scraps, milk jugs, the insides of soap boxes, and other throw-outs. Almost all of her works were ”memory paintings,” showing plantation life as she remembered it: picking cotton, gathering figs, threshing pecans; the weddings, baptisms, funerals, and other scenes of everyday life. Her titles were often intriguing, too.

A June 1953 article in Look magazine brought her to national attention. In 1957, some critics dubbed her “’the Black Grandma Moses.” And, in 1979, Robert Bishop, director of The Museum of American Folk Art in Washington, called the artist, then in her 90s, ”the most celebrated of all Southern contemporary painters.” By the 1970s, there were large public and private collections of Hunter’s work, and by the 1980s, several important traveling exhibitions featured her paintings. The prices for her work had risen from 25 cents to several thousand dollars.

In the last years of her life, Hunter left her rented cabin and moved upriver, living in a trailer she bought with money from selling her paintings. She painted until the last few months of her life, dying at the age of 100 on January 1, 1988. Hunter was more modest about her abilities. “God puts those pictures in my head and I just puts them on the canvas, like He wants me to,” the artist said.

Reference:
Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia
Volumes 1 and 2, edited by Darlene Clark Hine
Copyright 1993, Carlson Publishing Inc., Brooklyn, New York
ISBN 0-926019-61-9

Click to see original Look and Saturday Evening Post articles

If you’ve never been to Natchitoches, LA, please make plans to visit. It is rich in African-American history.  If you do decide to come, I’m only an hour and some minutes away so shoot me an email offloop and I’ll even meet you there.

The answer to yesterday’s quiz question was Harriett Tubman.

Today’s Black History question is What state was the first to have more blacks than whites?

Missouri
Florida
South Carolina
Tennessee

P.S. - If you’re an aspiring writer or want to learn about self-publishing, check out today’s post on Blogging in Black: http://blogginginblack.com/?p=1169

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