Lois Mailou Jones: the decorative patterns of her life - 87-year-old painter and former Howard University professor - Cover Story

American Visions, June-July, 1993 by Tritobia Hayes Benjamin

Family summer vacations at Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts not only served as an inspiration for many of painter Lois Mailou Jones' compositions but also cultivated her love of nature. "I'll always remember, as a child, finishing school in June and getting the trunks packed and ready to go," she recalls. "It was a delight to take the train to Woods Hole, where we would board the ferry for the island. When we arrived, we would take the horses and buggies up to 25 Pacific Avenue. To see the buttercups, the beauty of the landscape and the ocean, was the thrill of my life. It was so incredible that I am sure it affected my life to the extent that I am to this day a great lover of nature."

Jones visits Martha's Vineyard every summer, and she still paints: watercolors of her beloved island, a portrait of the first black graduate of Suffolk Law School in Boston--her father, Thomas Vreeland Jones--for the school's library, a series on Josephine Baker.

The 87-year-old artist has been an active painter for more than six decades. Triple bypass surgery, performed 3 1/2 years ago, may have slowed her down, but it didn't keep her from attending--two months later--the opening reception of the traveling retrospective exhibit "The World of Lois Mailou Jones." Nor has it kept her from traveling to each venue and lecturing on her art. Between monitoring her health and preparing presentations, Jones' artistic productivity has waned, but her drive has not: She has persevered in the face of the odds against her, and she has been unrelenting in her quest for recognition.

After graduating from the prestigious School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1927, Jones embarked on a career as a textile designer. Though she felt some satisfaction as a young artist to have her designs sold across the country, they carried no signature--and, as she says, "I wanted my name to go down in history."

Finding her way as a painter came neither quickly nor easily. Initially turned down for a teaching position at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and at Howard University, Jones heeded educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown's call for African Americans to use their talents to educate youth in the South and accepted her offer to teach at the newly developed Palmer Memorial Institute, one of the nation's first preparatory schools for African Americans, in Sedalia, N.C. There, Jones established the art curriculum and served as the art department's chairperson for two years. (She also taught dancing, coached a basketball team and played the piano for Sunday morning worship services.)

With that experience under her belt, Jones joined the Howard University faculty as an instructor of design and watercolor in 1930. She, art historian and artist James A. Porter, and artist James L. Wells, under the eye of department head James V. Herring, constituted the art department and forged a curriculum unique among historically black colleges and universities. Jones remained at Howard until her retirement in 1977.

In her 47 years there, she instructed more than 2,500 students--young, old, amateur, professional, and of many racial and ethnic backgrounds. Those who went on to distinguish themselves as designers, graphic artists, educators, painters and sculptors include Elizabeth Catlett, David Driskell, Lou Stovall, Sylvia Snowden and Malkia Roberts.

Teaching, however, never interfered with Jones' own creative development. In the course of her career, two distinct styles evolved in her paintings, each one yielding a discernible passion for composition, structure, design and color. First, it was her early foray into impressionism and postimpressionism that defined her choice of presentation for over two decades, from 1937 to 1959. On the advice of sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller and composer Harry T. Burleigh, both of whom had achieved success in France, Jones pursued professional recognition in Paris while on sabbatical.

Still lifes, landscapes, street scenes and portraits created from her first visit to Paris, in 1937, owed more to the French artists of previous generations--Paul Cezanne, Maurice Utrillo--than to any of the new and innovative painters and techniques in vogue during the '30s. While studying at the Academie Julian, Jones embraced the styles of her two instructors, Pierre Montezin and Joseph Berges, as well as the words of encouragement offered by the father of French symbolist painting, Emile Bernard.

Fascinated by still-life compositions, Jones became intimate with a timeless subject. In "Les Pommes Vertes," 1938, there is an order and an austere simplicity that give green apples a new context. Executed with a palette knife, the heavy impasto stylization displays Jones' acute sense of control with a difficult tool. "Thus far her painting has been in the tradition, but not in imitation of Cezanne," James Porter noted of Jones' years abroad. "Miss Jones wishes to confirm [him] but at the same time to add an original note of her own. ... Sensuous color delicately adjusted to the mood indicates the artistic perceptiveness of this young woman."