Outsider art, such as Highwaymen paintings, is distinctive in that it is only recognized via the passage of time, and any widespread discovery of it is consistently preceded—as all superlative products are—by a powerful admiration and obsession held within the eyes and heart of the individual.
A Floridian by nature, I was born and raised in Hollywood, FL before my eventual relocation in 1976 to Ft. Pierce; to a city that would come to be known as the birthplace of the Highwaymen art movement. Five years later,
I began work as a firefighter in Indian River County. It was here that I encountered my first piece of Highwaymen art—an old, vividly pigmented landscape painting that had been hung upon a rusty nail stuck in one of
the walls of our station house. My curiosity now adequately sparked, I set about familiarizing myself with the names and stylistic attributes of these Highwaymen paintings.
African American artists such as Alfred Hair and Harold Newton used their unique style (a more acidic bucolicism, where quaint trees are transposed
as atmospheric, towering figures of an idyllic Floridian landscape) to render images different from any I had ever seen before. In my search for more information, I crossed paths with Tim Jacobs, who showed me the meaning
of an art collection. To date, he has logged over 15,000 Highwaymen paintings, and from this absurd number I have only gained strength in my desire to push such wonderful art out into the way of those who might otherwise have passed by, unflinching.
The journey of these Highwaymen—as expressed through their strong
sense of imagery—is certainly one worth telling, for behind the iconic paintings now appearing in uncounted museums, private collections and
even the state capitol building, there are real men wholly deserving to take their place within the rich history of Floridian determination and American artifice. |
