Lois Jones: after a 75-year quest for recognition, painter says, 'At 90, I arrived.'

Ebony, Jan, 1997 by Beth Baker

When painter Lois Mailou Jones was 15 years old, her mother hung her daughter's watercolors on a clothesline at their summer home on Martha's Vineyard. She invited friends over for punch and a chance to be a patron of the young artists work. "Mother's garden was my gallery," remembers Jones, smiling.

Jones has been painting ever since, for 75 productive years - and counting. And her work, which over the years has blended French, African, Caribbean and American themes, now hangs not in a backyard garden but in some of the country's most prestigious galleries. Among them: the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Although Jones is hardly a household name, she is now gaining recognition as an important American painter. "Over the last five years," says Jack Cowart, chief curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, "Lois' name has entered the canon of noteworthy art of our time."

Now Jones is basking in this long-overdue attention. "At 90, I arrived," she says gleefully.

But while Jones is clearly enjoying her current acclaim, the road to recognition hasn't been easy. In fact, her story is part of an American saga that has as much to do with human perseverance as it does with art.

One early barrier was the racial discrimination she encountered as major galleries for many years refused to exhibit works of African-Americans. Jones often submitted her art through the mail to ensure that it was considered on its own merits.

"My pictures were always hung," she says with pride. "[The museums] ever knew Lois Jones has Black."

Later on, while holding a respected position among other African-American artists, she continued to be slighted by the mainstream art world.

No longer. So rich is her body of work, critics now say, that it actually symbolizes the panoramic journey of American all throughout this century.

"She is a reflection of the varied facets at represent American art," says Tritobia Haves Benjamin, author of The Life and Art of Lois Mailou Jones (Pomegranate Artbooks, San Francisco, 1994). "Just as American art has unfolded, embracing different styles and different cultures, so too has Jones' career."

A short woman with a wide smile, Jones' erect posture, bronze hair and boldly patterned clothing make her. appear far younger than she is.

Despite arthritis in her knee, she graciously gives a visitor a tour of her home, set in a grand old neighborhood of upper northwest Washington, D.C. Her dining room table is piled with photographs, books, prints and mementos she has received.

Upstairs, in a room overlooking the backyard, is the studio where she paints, although not on the same rigorous schedule she used to observe.

Filling nearly every open space are paintings - many so different that they seem to be the work of different artists. But they are all her own, from still-lifes and muted scenes of French gardens to realistic portraits of ordinary Americans to the bold colors and geometric shapes of her "Haiti period" - a time in her life when she veered in a new artistic direction.

Jones attributes much of her success to her parents, who nurtured her talent from early childhood on. Born in Boston in 1905, she lived with her family on the top floor of an office building supervised by her father.

The downtown neighborhood was noisy and smoky, but every summer the family would escape to Martha's Vineyard to a house first owned by her grandmother. "It made me feel so very happy to be at Martha's Vineyard," says Jones, who returns every summer to that island off the Massachusetts coast. "To see the buttercups and daisies and the blue ocean - I just love nature, and I think that's why."

Seeing their daughter's affinity for drawing, her parents supplied her with crayons, colored pencils and her first set of watercolors at age seven.

Jones' formal training began when she attended Boston's High School for the Practical Arts and won a design scholarship to attend the prestigious School of the Museum of Fine Arts, one of only two Black students there.

While her mother was her artistic inspiration, her father, who went to night school and earned a law degree at age 40, bequeathed her an iron determination to succeed.

"If I set out to do something, I'm going to do it," says Jones firmly. "I discipline myself." Her tone softening, she adds, "And I love it. I love being an artist."

Fame, rather than financial security, motivated Jones initially. She was well on her way to being a successful textile designer when she realized she would receive little recognition for her work. For her name to become known, she would need to shift her career. "I decided I wanted to go down in history as a painter," she recalls.

A major milestone: While teaching art at the Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, N.C., she was asked by James Vernon Herring, chairman of the Department of Art at Howard University, to join Howard's faculty.

She arrived at Howard's Washington, D.C., campus in September 1930, and remained 47 years. While there, she guided the creative endeavors of some 2,500 students.