Hidden Figures: Clementine Hunter #BlackHERstoryMonth 2/29 (Patreon)

Hidden Figures: Clementine Hunter #BlackHERstoryMonth 2/29

Clementine Hunter was an American folk artist known for her paintings and quilts depicting Black life in the rural Deep South in the early 20th century. A Louisiana Creole born at Hidden Hill Plantation near Cloutierville, LA in 1886, Hunter began painting in her 50s and went on to produce and estimate five to ten thousand representational works based on her memories of Southern plantation life. Hunter painted mostly in oils, utilizing any surface she could find: glass jars, bottles, lampshades, canvas, plastic containers, boards, jugs, buckets and even spittoons. She sought out to recreate scenes from her life, painting such scenes as plantation funerals and baptisms along with child-minding, washing clothes, and picking cotton. She had a deliberate disregard for size and scale that gave her creations a surreal and whimsical quality that proved extremely influential on the mainstream art world, and she mostly used bright, primary colors for her abstract renderings of scenes from her memories. Hunter also worked in fabric arts, creating several quilts depicting plantation life, nature, and religious iconography. Her work was first exhibited in New Orleans in 1949, and by the 1970s she’d helmed several major solo exhibits, even being invited to Washington, D.C. by President Jimmy Carter to exhibit her art. Clementine Hunter was also the first Black American artist to have a solo exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art. One of her most well-known and largest scale works covers the walls of a food storage building at the former Melrose Plantation, where Hunter depicted the cycles of planting, harvest, celebration, and mourning in the Cane River region of Louisiana, in nine room-size panels. It was painted in 1955. Hunter is considered extremely pivotal as not only an artist, but as a cultural historian, as her work depicts aspects of Black American life that often went otherwise undocumented. Titles of her pieces include: ‘Washing Day,’ ‘Black Jesus,’ ‘Pecan Threshing,’ and ‘Cane River Funeral,’ as she painted the activities of Black Americans in the rural South, from the mundane and every day to divine. Hunter solely painted Black Americans and also preferred to paint women, often painting Black women as larger in scale than other figures as they nursed the ill, tended to children, worked outdoors, married, danced, and rejoiced. Many art historians note this elevation of women’s work and women within her paintings, especially as she often depicted angels and even occasionally Jesus as Black American women in her religious displays. Hunter was motivated to make art until the last few months of her life, as painting was something she felt compelled to do. “God gave me the power,” she said. “Sometimes I try to quit paintin’. I can’t. I can’t.” She died in 1988 in Louisiana, at 101 years old. #ClementineHunter #HiddenFigures ****************** Merchandise! MAKE SURE U GETTA SHIRT!! https://www.teepublic.com/user/sssseren Follow me on social media! Instagram: @sensei_aishitemasu Personal Tumblr: http://sensei-aishitemasu.tumblr.com Tumblr for my work: https://sssseren.tumblr.com Snapchat: sssseren GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/tc5wh7q Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seren_sensei ****************** Did you know I wrote a book? ☺️ 'So, About That... A Year of Contemporary Essays on Race and Pop Culture' Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/About-That-Contemporary-Essays-Culture-ebook/dp/B013V0CHK6 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013V0CHK6 Digital download (e-book): https://gumroad.com/l/IkUa ****************** Links: Clementine Hunter: https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/clementine-hunter Self-Taught Artist Clementine Hunter Painted the Bold Hues of Southern Life: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/self-taught-artist-clementine-hunter-painted-bold-hues-southern-life-180970572/ 'In The Footsteps of Clementine Hunter:' https://www.nytimes.com/video/travel/100000002281585/in-the-footsteps-of-clementine-hunter.html Clementine Hunter: https://64parishes.org/entry/clementine-hunter The Inspiring Story of Clementine Hunter: https://artsandculture.google.com/theme/the-inspiring-story-of-clementine-hunter/5gLiLE-PhSKCJQ Looking For Clementine Hunter's Louisiana: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/travel/looking-for-clementine-hunters-louisiana.html Clementine Hunter: http://www.artnet.com/artists/clementine-hunter/5 Clementine Hunter: https://marciaweberartobjects.com/clementine.html Clementine Hunter: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Clementine-Hunter Clementine Hunter (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clementine_Hunter Clementine Hunter House at Melrose Plantation (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpNbki27EjY