Enduring Voices Catalogue (6-21-23) - Flipbook - Page 45
Whitfield
LOVELL
(b. 1959)
Whitfield Lovell is best known for his installations that incorporate
masterful Conte crayon portraits of anonymous African Americans
from between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights
Movement eras. Lovell uses vintage photography to find his
subjects, and then draws their portraits on aged wooden panels,
often pairing the drawings with found objects that connect the
subject to former generations. He creates the drawings in pencil,
oil stick, or charcoal.
Whitfield Lovell was born in the Bronx, New York, to an elementary
school teacher mother and postal clerk/photographer father of
West Indian descent. He attended the High School of Music and
Art in Manhattan, and earned a bachelor’s of fine arts degree
at the Cooper Union School of Art in 1981. It was during a 1977
trip to Europe that he decided he would focus on painting, as a
Velasquez painting “spoke to him,” he says. Lovell reconsidered
the nature of his work in 1985 while attending the Skowhegan
School of Painting and Sculpture, and he began working
monochromatically and using old photographs as inspiration.
Influenced by Jacob Lawrence and Horace Pippin, as well as
Mexican and West Indian folk art, Lovell often also examines his
own heritage through his work.
WHITFIELD LOVELL
BUY THINGS YOU LIKE
There are two ways to collect. One is to be very
disciplined and decide exactly what you want
to collect and collect with precision. Successful
collections are often formed that way. We are not
that kind of collector. We once had dinner with the
editor of an art magazine, and he sat there and
talked to Susan for a while. When he stood up to
make a speech, he said, “I just want to say that I
am sitting here at dinner and I have heard the best
collecting philosophy that I can think of. Mrs. Goode
told me that she just buys what she likes.” We got
to know Whitfield through Bridget Moore’s gallery
and the entire exhibition he did for the Virginia Beach
Contemporary Art Center. He fascinated us even
before he was a certified MacArthur genius. We have
other works, but the work from the Kin series subtitled
(Revolution) that has model train cars running on
a circular track just seems to be made for a railroad
family.
–Susan S. and David R. Goode
Interesting Lovell Fact:
Whitfield Lovell’s first installation piece was on the walls of Villa Val Lemme in Capriatta d’Orba, Italy, in 1993.
Lovell dignified the walls of the former slave trader site by painting an image of a highly distinguished Black person.
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