Clementine Hunter By: Jim Lane The Wash by Clementine Hunter 18"x24" oil on canvas board, Click on picture for more of Clementine's work.

She was just one generation removed from slavery. She was born in 1886 at Hidden Hill, a cotton plantation in Louisiana. Until she was 35 she raised kids and picked cotton. She married and buried two husbands and had seven children. Eventually she became a domestic servant at Melrose Plantation also in Louisiana. It was there she began creating her first works of art, sewing together scraps of cloth to make quilts. In 1940, at the age of 53, she painted her first picture, on an old window blind, using leftovers from castaway tubes of oils she found when an artist visited the plantation. She was encouraged by a French writer, Francois Mignon, who was also visiting the plantation, assessing the owner's sizable art collection. He gave her paint and encouragement. Her name was Clementine Hunter.

She painted plantation life, Biblical scenes, and eventually, late in life, abstracts. Subjects also included funerals, dances, brawls, cotton picking, cooking, washing, mending, quilting, flowers, and even portraits. Her work was primitive. She never had art class in her life, or for that matter, ever learned to read. She had barely the equivalent of two years of schooling. For years she gave her work to friends or sold it for a few dollars, hardly enough to pay for the supplies. She even had private showings at her rundown shack, charging 25 cents admission. In 1949, she was featured in an arts and crafts show in New Orleans where her work first attained public notice. By 1955 she was having her work exhibited at a number of local museums and colleges. At her first show, she could not attend the opening. Because of her race, she was only allowed in the back door afterwards.

The owner of Melrose Plantation, J.H. Henry, invited Clementine to paint murals in a traditional African house on the plantation. The African House can be seen in the painting entitled The Wash above. It was designed by a former slave, Marie Therese Metoyer, when she married a slave owned by the family which owned the land. Built in 1750, the African House was based on her memory of her home in Africa. One part was used as a store, the other, a prison for slaves. Well into her sixties, Clementine Hunter painted nine separate murals and numerous side panels depicting various scenes from the nearby area.

By the 1970s, she had the dubious distinction of having her work copied, the forgeries sold as originals. At an exhibit of her work in Washington during the latter half of the decade, she also did not attend the opening even though she was sent a personal invitation by President Jimmy Carter. She is said to have remarked, "If Jimmy Carter wants to see me, he knows where I am. He can come here." The President didn't come to see her but the media did as her work showed up in a television documentary and in various galleries all over the country. Eventually, she was able to buy a mobile home with the proceeds from her work and even though her paintings traveled broadly in various shows, she didn't. She preferred to stay at home and paint. She died in January of 1988 at the age of 101. During her lifetime she completed over five thousand paintings, working steadily up until the last month of her life. Other writers have referred to her as a black Grandma Moses. I would rather consider her an original unto herself.

Jim Lane is fifty-ish, balding, bearded, bespectacled, professorial, outgoing, knowledgable about a lot of things, expert on a very few. He grew up in the small town of Stockport, situated on the Muskingum River in Southeastern Ohio. He graduated from a un-noteworthy business college in Cincinnati, from the U.S. Air Force, and from Ohio University where he also obtained a masters degree and wracked up several hours of post-graduate work as well. For most of his professional life he's run a portrait business out of his home, specializing in sports portraits done in pencil and colored pencil.

Happily married for almost 30 years, Jim taught elementary and high school art for 26 years and also spent many enjoyable hours in the front of a local community college classroom. Recently he has retired from teaching in favor of painting, traveling, writing, designing web pages, and "...doing things I've never done before."

E-mail Jim at: jimlane@jimlaneart.com

Visit The Jim Lane Collection at:   http://www.jimlaneart.com

Or Jim Lane's Arty-fact Archives at:   http://www.1st.net/users/jimlane/Archive.html