January 27–February 3, 2000

art

Lady Paints the Blues

Looking back at history through the eyes of Lady Bird Strickland.

by Robin Rice

Lady Bird — Retrospective 1945-1998

Villanova University Art Gallery, Connelly Center, 800 Lancaster Ave., through Feb. 9, 610-519-4612

The myth of the modern painter allows for the possibility that one might end up in a mental institution, just like van Gogh. However, in myths, a super-talented artist never spends nearly 20 years working in a mental hospital simply because she’s African American and has a daughter to support. But Lady Bird Strickland, who currently has a solo show at Villanova University Gallery, is no myth. She must be one of the saner individuals around, and she’s certainly a survivor.

"I think God put me on this earth for a reason," she told Junious Stanton, writing for The Black Suburban Journal in 1998. "He put me on this earth to create and document what’s happening that’s not been written down or that’s been swept under the rug."

Her talent was recognized early. Lady Bird, as she signs her work, was born in 1926 in Georgia. She attended a two-room school where drawing on the backs of tablets, the only paper available, was punished with a "whipping." Following the death of her mother, Lady Bird came to New York City at the age of 13 or 14. She won prizes for painting and costume design and, in 1945, a scholarship to Pratt Institute.

	Visually, Lady Bird’s style is reminiscent of the great mid-century illustrators: Norman Rockwell or Thornton Utz.

Later, Lady Bird worked in advertising and designed lighting for public spaces. In spite of occasional plums, including a prize for costume design, steady employment as an artist eluded her. She painted neckties on Broadway, opened a dress boutique, and did portrait sketches for $1 each. She sold paintings to Marian Anderson, Eartha Kitt and Elsa Peretti; but, ultimately, she made the practical decision that a regular job was necessary to rear her child. Looking at Lady Bird’s skillful representations, it’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that race was the chief barrier to a successful career in illustration or advertising. However, New York’s Bellevue Hospital paid the bills. She stopped exhibiting while working as a nurse’s aide there, much of the time in a prison ward, but she kept on painting.

Most of the work in the Villanova show was completed since Lady Bird’s retirement in 1984. Visually, her style is reminiscent of the great mid-century illustrators: Norman Rockwell or Thornton Utz, who did his share of Saturday Evening Post covers. It’s every bit as accomplished – though not as varied in subject matter as Rockwell — and clearly a style in tune with the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. One can’t help regretting the neglect of a talent, but there is much to celebrate in Lady Bird’s work. The paintings can be loosely divided into groupings: celebrations of the Harlem Jazz Age, which Lady Bird experienced firsthand; comments on slavery and civil rights; and genre scenes and portraits.

	Lullaby of Birdland: Strickland’s Paintin’ the Town captures the elegance of the Harlem Jazz Age.

Deft portraits of jazz greats complement the subjects’ salient features with suitable iconography: Satchmo’s white handkerchief or Fats Waller’s flashy diamond ring. Often the performer’s best-known song titles are written on floating fragments of music or records. Related paintings like Zoot Suiters and Stompin’ at the Savoy are more stylized with pastel colors — pink, powder blue and ivory – and angular exaggerated lines. In Paintin’ the Town, glamorous couples approach Birdland from rakish automobiles as if in a romantic dream. Each bejeweled woman is gorgeously gowned and escorted by a white-suited beau who attentively bends to her words. It is both a fantasy and a realistic evocation of the high-powered elegance characteristic of the period. Nostalgic scenes like This Must Be Heaven (three couples slow dancing in the clouds) and Stompin’ at the Savoy (wild swing dancers) seem likely to find buyers.

Lady Bird’s portraits of black heroes were probably my favorite works in the show. To Seek the Forbidden Dream gathers together 32 leaders including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Barbara Jordan, Jesse Owens, Medgar Evers and Rosa Parks. The artist’s ability to capture a likeness shines here, as does her ornate script writing. Two paintings of the 1963 March on Washington take different approaches. One painted in 1986 celebrates the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (largely authored by Eleanor Roosevelt) and emphasizes the diversity of people who participated in the march. The other, painted in 1970, reduces the crowd to a pointillist field framing the reflecting pool of the Washington Monument and carries the message of sheer numbers.

A pair of strongly narrative paintings deals with the issue of mixed-race children born into slavery. The antebellum scene White Chocolate depicts a refined garden party under romantic Spanish moss. The viewer quickly realizes, however, that in spite of its soft colors and greeting-card style, the subject is not Gone With the Wind sentimentality, but the pain of slaves who must serve their half-siblings. At the center of the composition is a pretty, light-skinned young woman with blue eyes and fair curls. The many-buttoned, starched cuffs of her elaborate maid’s uniform seem like manacles, as she gracefully offers preoccupied white guests pink lemonade and other refreshments from a large tray.

Checkerboard Harvest approaches the same subject more harshly in both symbolic and literal terms. Pregnant slaves with half-white children in tow wait beside white slave owners who escort shackled Africans onto the plantation. Raw images of the slave trade are interwoven with a swirl of pink fetuses and silhouettes actually filled in with checkerboard colors.

A painting of her own back yard (including topiary trees and a table set for tea), an Italian landscape (her daughter and grandchildren live in Europe), and a beautiful egret are among Lady Bird’s contemporary subjects.

Lady Bird has said her painting won’t be constrained by categories. She’s certainly earned the right to paint whatever she wants — and it’s clear that she has the ability to do just that.