Jacob Lawrence

North Carolina · connected1917–2000

African American painter and art professor (1917–2000)

Worked in Black Mountain
Worked at Black Mountain College

painter, draftsperson, printmaker, illustrator

Quotations with a citation

I try to point out to them there's less chance of your becoming just illustrative when you become involved with the plastic elements of painting. So in short this is how I try to adapt it to teaching. You don't see a head as a head, but you see it as a form and as a shape. And you can work as realistically as you care to. But if you just see these things for what they are the chances are you will become more illustrative and you will never develop from this, you know; move out from this…

…My early beginnings, as most Negroes in the United States, has been the Negro experience. This is all I knew at one time was the Negro experience. My whole background, Negro family, Negro community, everything was Negro. So I think it was natural that I would use this symbol for my expression, you see…

‘The migrants kept coming’ is a refrain of triumph over adversity. If it rings true for you today, then it must still strike a chord in our American experience.

When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.

In the libraries

Open Library Aesop's fables · 1997 View library record ↗ Open Library Harriet and the Promised Land · 1968 View library record ↗ Open Library Jacob Lawrence · 1974 View library record ↗ Open Library Jacob Lawrence 2007 Calendar · 2006 View library record ↗ Open Library Jacob Lawrence 2008 Calendar · 2007 View library record ↗ Open Library The Great Migration · 1993 View library record ↗

Read Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence 1974 Find a copy Harriet and the Promised Land 1968 Find a copy The Great Migration 1993 Find a copy Aesop's fables 1997 Find a copy Jacob Lawrence 2007 Calendar 2006 Find a copy Jacob Lawrence 2008 Calendar 2007 Find a copy