An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 4/13/2021
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"Things that I thought were liabilities turned out to be assets."
Today we look at the achievements of artist and illustrator Simmie Lee Knox, whose likeness I dearly hope I have done justice, in this baseball card-sized watercolour-with-ink.
Knox is perhaps most famous for having painted the official White House Presidential portraits of Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton; the first black artist to be selected for such.
Born in 1935 Alabama, a chance baseball-playing injury at the age of 13 led to eye surgery, and drawing was suggested as a possible aid to therapy. From there Knox discovered his latent talent --unfortunately the segregated high school which he attended at the time did not have an art program, but his teachers recognized his ability and found a tutor nonetheless. After a short stint in the Army, Knox went on to graduate from Delaware State College, got his Master's in Art from the Tyler School of Art in Pennsylvania, and became a teacher at Bowie (Md.) State College and at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C.
Knox's art initially leaned towards the abstract, but he soon settled into his favourite challenge: the human face. "If I talk to you for five minutes, I have you pretty much sized up," he says of this subject. Early commissions from celebrities brought him to the attention of the Washington, D.C. art scene, and by the end of the 1990's he was painting such luminaries as Supreme Court justices Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. A portrait of Senator Blanche Bruce (see Lesson #24 in this series) and a recommendation from Judge Ginsburg herself brought Knox to the attention of the White House, and in 2002 he was commissioned to paint the official White House portraits of the Clintons, which he describes as his "personal Super Bowl moment."
Knox continues to paint and inspire a new generation of artists (having lately pivoted to more landscapes and flower studies). He painted a four-subject study for Vanderbilt University of four of their most noteworthy African-American alums, including the Rev. James Lawson (see previous Lesson in this series). A more recent project, "The Art of Justice: Honoring and Continuing a Movement for Equality through Artistic Expression," in Mt. Rainier, Maryland, incorporated a group exhibition in protest at the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin.
Learn more about Mr. Knox's remarkable artistic journey at:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/18/portrait-artist-simmie-knox/1929157/
Next page - Lesson 81: Daisy Elizabeth Lampkin