For pioneering African American painter Lois Mailou Jones, a retrospective

By Jacqueline Trescott, Washington Post

Lois Mailou Jones, the artist and professor, tended to bark at her friends and students in a sharp voice that was heavily tinged with a French accent, acquired during her years of inspiration in Haiti, West Africa and France. But as soon as she had made her point, and the visitor turned to the walls in her Northwest home and atelier, the sting was gone.

Mailou Jones’s great gift was transporting the viewer into the daily lives of her subjects. Her work was colorful, soaked with the shades of skin, sunshine, textiles, fruit and other objects of art. When she did a mask, the eyes moved with you. When she showed an African American girl cleaning fish, the strokes were rhythmic.

Mailou Jones taught at Howard University for 47 years. She had plenty of lessons to share, not only about technique, but about fighting for acceptance in the white art world. Despite rejections and racism, she pursued her own path and is considered a forerunner of several black art movements. She was the first African American to have a solo show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in 1973. Jones, who died in 1998 at 92, is represented in many major museums and collections.