Guitarist, ca. 1959
Charcoal and gouache on illustration board
44 x 38 inches
Gift of the Fabergé Society of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Museum Purchase, The National Endowment for the Arts Fund for American Art, 2001.10
I believe in the transcendent power of music. I studied the violin for about nine years. My mother insisted on music, even though art was the most important thing for me. Later, I became interested in dance, and I studied modern dance for awhile. I also illustrated a book, Songs Belafonte Sings. Harry Belafonte and I have been very close friends for a number of years, and he’s been a great help to me in expressing my ideas in art.
I guess the most important thing is to say something that is meaningful. I’ve boiled it down to three things I’ve essentially tried to do. The first is that I try to deal with truth, as truth may be revealed in my personal interpretation. Truth in a very spiritual sense, underscoring the sense of the inner man. Second, I try to deal with beauty; the beauty in man and the beauty in life. I come from the perspective that man is basically good. I’ve lived in the South, and we’ve had five lynchings in my family, and I’ve been beaten up twice, once in New Orleans and once in Virginia. But in spite of my experiences, and my family’s experiences and tragedies, I still feel that man is essentially good. I have to start from this premise in all my work because I’m incapable of doing meaningful work that has to do with something I hate. The third thing I try to deal with is dignity. I think that once man is robbed of his dignity he is nothing.
I focus primarily on my people and try to give my images universality – meaning an enduring sense of truth and beauty. I always feel that the artist only does meaningful things when he draws upon that which is closest to him, and he uses that as a springboard to deal with a more broad, all-encompassing subject. It is only natural to have a special concern to my own people – their history, their culture, their struggle to survive in this, a racist country. I’m proud of being black. However, my philosophy doesn’t exclude any nation or race of people.