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

Family summer vacations at Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts not solitary served as an inspiration for many of painter Lois Mailou Jones' compositions on the contrary also cultivated her love of nature. "I'll always remember, as a child, finishing place of education in June and getting the stems packed and ready to go" she recalls. "It was a delight to take the train to groves 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 diocese the buttercups, the beauty of the landscape and the ocean, was the thrill of my life. It was for a like reason incredible that I am assured it affected my life to the expansion that I am to this day a great lover of nature."

Jone visits Martha's Vineyard each summer, and she still paints: watercolors of her beloved island, a portrait of the first black graduate of Suffolk Law gymnasium in Boston--her father, Thomas Vreeland Jones--for the school's library, a series upon 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, on the other hand it didn't keep her from attending--two month 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 upon her art. Between monitoring her health and preparing presentations, Jones' artistic productivity has waned, on the contrary her drive has not: She has persever in the face of the not divisible by 2s against her, and she has been unrelenting in her search for recognition.

After graduating from the prestigious gymnasium of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1927 Jone embarked upon a career as a textile designer. notwithstanding that she felt some satisfaction as a young artist to have her designs sold across the land they carried no signature--and, as she says, "I wanted my name to proceed down in history."

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

With that experience below 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, beneath the eye of department head James V Herring, constituted the art department and forged a curriculum unique among historically black guilds and universities. Jones remained at Howard until her retirement in 1977

In her 47 years there, she instructed more than 2500 students--young, aged amateur, professional, and of many racial and ethnic backgrounds. Those who went upon 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, at no time interfered with Jones' own creative unfolding In the course of her career, sum of two units distinct styles evolved in her paintings, each individual yielding a discernible passion for composition, configuration design and color. First, it was her early foray into impressionism and postimpressionism that defined her choice of presentation for above two decades, from 1937 to 1959 upon the advice of sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller and composer Harry T Burleigh, the couple of whom had achieved succes in France, Jone pursu professional recognition in Paris while upon sabbatical.

Still lifes, landscapes, public way 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 novel and innovative painters and techniques in repute during the '30s. While studying at the Academie Julian, Jone embraced the dictions of her two instructors, Pierre Montezin and Joseph Berges, as well as the words of encouragement proffered by the father of French symbolist painting, Emile Bernard.

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