Hughes to Angelou, to Piccolo Spoleto - layers of my life & art

Green Skirt is a collage of acrylic painted paper over a quick oil painting sketch. These are layers applied over a period of time as the sketch was done months before I decided to add collage. 

Green Skirt, mixed media-collage, art is 12 x 16.5", white mat, black frame and plexy

​Life also has layers that build over time. I think it was in the early 1990's when I lived in Williamsport, PA and a friend talked me into driving up to a college in NY state to hear Maya Angelou speak. A treasured experience, to be sure. I was teaching graphic design and not yet painting at the time.

Maya Angelou talked about her journey, much of it hurtful and sad. She read a poem, a soothing balm, by Langston Hughes called Harlem Sweeties and I was hypnotized by his words and her delivery. Talk about layers! It stuck with me.

So, many years later when I picked up the paint brush and had occasion to paint black figures, Rollins Edwards and George Stinney Jr, among others, a variety of hue is what I chose to depict, layer by layer.

Excerpt from Harlem Sweeties
BY LANGSTON HUGHES

Let me repeat:
Caramel, brown sugar,
A chocolate treat.
Molasses taffy,
Coffee and cream,
Licorice, clove, cinnamon
To a honey-brown dream.
Ginger, wine-gold,
Persimmon, blackberry,
All through the spectrum
Harlem girls vary--

So if you want to know beauty’s
Rainbow-sweet thrill,
Stroll down luscious,
Delicious, fine Sugar Hill.

Langston Hughes, “Harlem Sweeties” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted with the permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated.
Source: Collected Poems (Vintage Books, 1994)

To enjoy the entire poem go to  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47874/harlem-sweeties

Green Skirt is currently on display at the 2019 Piccolo Spoleto Juried Art Exhibit at Charleston's City Gallery through June 9. It's a wonderful grouping of works by a variety of artists.

http://www.piccolospoleto.com/visual-arts-2/