The State of Florida recognizes that the individual artist and benefactor is essential for cultural development. These individuals contribute to the national or international reputation of Florida as a country with a strong and sustained commitment to artistic excellence development.
These artists are renowned in the techniques that make the art galleries in Florida are worth to watch for, and with their skills, they make a name that makes the Florida art galleries more valuable.
Depending on how long you lived in Florida, you may or may not have heard of the Highways. Today they are better known, but not long ago they were an anonymous group of artists from Florida selling original paintings of Florida landscapes from their car trunks.
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Their First Steps
Though for several decades, they would not be called the Highwaymen, these African-American artists created a unique chapter in the cultural history of Florida. A total of twenty-six people from Fort Pierce and nearby areas created folk art in Florida from the 1950s to the 1980s–and did it well under the art world radar.
They cut costs by using building materials; they had to sell more by working quickly. They were then able to deliver original art at a reasonable price by selling directly. They sold the door-to-door artwork or their car trunks, mostly on Florida’s east coast from Daytona Beach to Miami along the A1A and U.S. 1.Some of the artists would later travel to the growing inner communities inland.
The Kind of Techniques they use in Creating Art
Their palette included vibrant green colors, sunset oranges and blues, and grays that often featured the backlight of the scene with the sun or moon. The highways often painted out from the memory as they captured scenes of natural Florida with which they had grown up, one that yielded to the development brought about by the growth of the state in the mid-twentieth century.
They used oil-based paints and painted the artwork with crown molding on Upson board (a roof sheeting product). The artists often painted together but, while admiring the natural beauty around them, they did not stare in front of the landscapes and paint peacefully.
Instead, these artists approached their work differently, painting in a shaded backyard or carport or shed, imagining the scenes from their surroundings’ imprinted images. Some would have at once worked on several paintings having attached the boards to a wall and then stroking in several similar scenes. Sometimes they worked fast with palette knives to cut into highlights.
Where Some of their Paintings Are
The paintings of the highwaymen have much value in these days ‘that’s why their artworks secured in some famous art galleries in Florida such as the MAC Fine Art gallery, you can visit their website at https://macfineart.com/.
The MAC Fine Art gallery exhibits works from renowned names in the much-desired art world, displaying Florida’s most important and most substantial exhibition space. The MAC Fine Art gallery also features a custom design frame shop where guests can buy their desired frames for the purchased piece of art, a state-of-the-art Giclee painting facility, and a digital photography studio.
This art gallery represents many of the world’s most renowned publishers and top-tier prints from some of the significant names in the arts in the world. They also provide private art collectors, architects and consultants, designers, art dealers, and homeowners with artworks.
Some of their Renowned Artists
Alfred Hair. He was an American painter from Fort Pierce, Florida, who was instrumental in founding the Florida Highwaymen artist movement together with Harold Newton. Hair is the one who leads of a loose-knit group of creative African American artists selling their vibrantly colorful landscapes from car trunks along South Florida’s eastern coastal roads. Hair was introduced to the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2004.
Robert Butler. He began his professional career in 1968. He often sold his paintings on the roadside or door-to-door in the early days. The term “Highwayman” which Butler helped the coin because of their method of making paintings and then traveling along Florida’s highways to sell the paintings for a living for his category of an artist. By creating over one hundred paintings per year, he improved his skills. Robert developed his style despite a lack of formal training, exemplified by dramatically illuminated portrayals of landscapes.
Takeaway
The Highwaymen have created large numbers of relatively inexpensive landscape paintings using building materials rather than traditional supplies of art for over 60 years. They sold them out of their car trunks, as no galleries would accept their work, often still wet throughout Florida, in towns and cities, along roadsides. But now, they are better respected for their resilience and determination for the sake of artistry.
Their success and longevity are remarkable given that they began their careers in the racially uncertain and violent times in Florida in the 1950s and in the social conditions of Jim Crow South, where the motion of the civil rights movement just began to gain equal rights. And I think they should be renowned just by that. That’s why their works of art are worthy to be posted in Florida art galleries.
