Lois Mailou Jones

"Lois Mailou Jones is a pioneering and masterful twentieth-century American artist who has surmounted prejudices and roadblocks without losing the vitality, warmth, and color that earmark her brilliant work. Every lover of the creative spirit in the visual arts should know her oeuvre, as well as the sweep of her triumphant life, stretching over virtually the whole of this century.
Jones began her career, after excellent preparation at the School of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, at a time when racial prejudice and discrimination were omnipresent features of American life. Although she was born in new England, her life was not free of subtle color barriers, which sometimes expressed themselves in more muted tones. And the Washington, D.C., in which she settled in 1930 was a bastion of Jim Crow practice. Except for France, where she enjoyed freedom from U.S. racial attitudes, and some fortunate experiences with particularly fair-minded arts figures such as the Vose family, Jones engineered her professional place in spite of barriers. Sometimes she entered works in exhibitions that did not recognize African-American artists by having white friends deliver the paintings. In other cases, prizes initially awareded to her on merit were subsequently taken away and given to white competitors. And she often found herself well received abroad. Despite these trials, Jones prevailed on the basis of her talent, energy, and persistence. She refused to be discouraged."
- from "The life and art of Lois Mailou Jones" Tritobia Hayes Benjamin. Pomegranate Artbooks. Copyright 1994 Tritobia Hayes Benjamin.