AFRICAN AMERICAN Interest Vintage MCM PAINTING Haiti Symbolism Artist ABSTRACT

  
1970's oil painting with collage on artist-designed textile with leaf pattern mounted with tacks verso (instead of in the tacking margins) to Haitian strainer bars and titled in English (not French) "My Perception of Life" and "Glyph". Unframed, unrestored, unsigned painting measures 10 1/4 x 40 inches. Not perfect, but good condition painting would benefit from cleaning, touch ups, etc.

Jones is today considered one of the most important African American woman artists. Recognition came late in life, and mainly due to the efforts of her former student, David Driskell. She was a watercolor teacher at Howard University for many years. Lois Mailou Jones was also a textile designer: Her designs for cretonne fabric vary greatly, from more traditional floral and leaf designs to Design for Cretonne Drapery Fabric (Palm Trees: oranges, yellows, green), c.

1928, which presents a Caribbean-esque, if not African-esque, whimsy. Jones' painting style varied greatly, too, and during the same periods.

She could do an Impressionist work in the same year she'd do an Abstract or Modernist work. The oil offered here is both Modernist and Abstract. What we see in it is the pictorial language of Lois Mailou Jones. African mask, some sort of all-seeing eye, a woman in African or Haitian fashion, a design element that reminds me of a hair comb, spirals that I think might represent infinity, a fence-like or grid design, glyphs, areas of paint that are applied from the tube without using a brush, designs that are tight and have an airbrushed look, etc.

Jones was known to create'long and low' 40 paintings, she incorporated collage in her paintings plus created outright collages, and most importantly did works like this that remind me of a patchwork quilt: all within one singular painting there are actually many separate paintings. Lois first went to Haiti in 1954. She'd met Haitian artist Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noel 20 years earlier, in NYC. They kept in touch and married in France in 1953. They lived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti throughout the years, but also lived in Washington, D.

At first, Jones was inspired by African art that she'd seen in Paris. It wasn't until many years later that she became inspired by Haiti and the culture, and then actually went to Africa in the late 60's, early 70's. When I consider the title, "My Perception of Life", it makes the most sense that this painting would've been done after going to Africa. I also think she didn't really get into collage until the late 60's. Part of the African American experience and what museum people discuss when it comes to Jones' work is the African diaspora or afrodiaspora.

This is the theme of the painting offered here, and it's more than just the artist's observation -- it's personal. Besides the title "My Perception of Life", there are two other areas with markings on the back of the painting.

One looks over or under sketching and I believe it reads as "glyph". "Glyphs" is actually the title of a Lois M. Jones painting in the MFA, Boston. The other writing is sloppy and in very faint white: a character I can't make out and then what looks like "Hurc" (makes no sense). This may be a provenance clue, though. For example, if it actually reads as something like "O'Hara", there was a fellow D.

Artist named Eliot O'Hara who owned at least one Lois Jones painting, which he donated to Bowdoin College Museum of Art.