Minnie Evans

Born in Long Creek, North Carolina, Minnie Evans was a self-taught African American artist. She began drawing in middle age, and she attributed her compulsion to make art to divine inspiration. Her work is characterized by an emphatic symmetry, vivid colors, and imagery that combines human faces and natural forms.

Of her work, Evans said, “This has come to me, this art that I have put out, from nations that I suppose might have been destroyed before the flood. No one knows anything about them, but God has given it to me to bring them back into the world.” [1]

Scholars attribute Evans’s frequent use of plant forms in her drawings to her employment as a gate attendant at Airlie Gardens in Wilmington, North Carolina. She said, “Sometimes I want to get off in the garden to talk with God. I have the blooms, and when the blooms are gone, I love to watch the green. God dressed the world in green.” [2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/19/obituaries/minnie-evans-95-folk-painter-noted-for-visionary-work.html, accessed 11/3/21

[2] Ibid.