The Florida Highwaymen

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose, and I didn't go to art school, but I still love to learn about art. And so I do it here every episode. 

Betty: And I'm Betty. I also didn't go to art school, but I also love learning about art. And today I'm going to be talking about a bunch of people who also never went to art school, but are amazing anyway.

Quinn: Ooh, my favorite.

Betty: Yeah. I think this is quite a fitting topic for us because again, like we're quite often talking about what it's like to be outside of the art world and these people that we're going to get into today are very much, or at least used to be very much outside of the mainstream art world. They are awesome, in my opinion, anyway, and hopefully I can help convince everybody else that's the case too.

Quinn: So who are we talking about today?

Betty: Today, we're talking about a group of artists that's collectively known as the Florida Highwaymen, or simply known as the Highwaymen. Now, the caveat is they weren't all men. One of them was a woman. But anyway, this was the name that was—they didn't name themselves this, somebody else kind of gave them that name. I’ll get into that sort of when I go through their origins. But before I get into it, have you heard of these people before? Or, or is this like totally—and it's totally okay if you haven't, because again, these people are not mainstream.

Quinn: Yeah, I have not heard of these artists before. Really excited to hear more about them and especially like how they got their name, if they didn't name themselves that.

Betty: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I guess before I get started, I popped a link in the show notes which is an example of one of the artist’s paintings and there's a diverse amount of styles, but I say this painting is kind of representative of the type of work they were creating. And I just wanted to get your kind of initial reaction on like what you think of this painting. 

Quinn: Yeah, this is a pretty straight forward painting, I would say. It’s fairly realistic. I think at first glance you might think this is a photo. But it is a landscape painting of a sunset, the sky is gorgeous. There's lots of orange and red in the clouds. But it's over the top of a lake with lots of trees peeking out of the lake. And it's just this really pretty nature painting.

Betty: Yeah, so this is this is actually an untitled and undated painting by one of the Highwaymen called Harold Newton. And it’s, as far as we know, it's kind of like a typical Florida back country sunset scene on the waterfront. And it is very beautiful and it apparently—like I've been to Florida a few times, but according to what I looked up, if you live in Florida or especially if you live sort of in the more, I guess, like country, rural side of Florida, more so between the 50s and the 70s, this would have been a typical sunset scene that you could see outside of your house if you lived on the waterfront. But it's obviously painted in kind of like a more vivid striking type of way. Anyway, so I'll kind of give an overview about these artists. So yeah, so the Highwaymen is composed of 26 artists, at least officially, and 25 of them are men and one of them is a woman. And they're basically known for painting Florida's landscapes. They started doing it in the 1950s. But they did that prolifically until the 1970s, which is kinda when they dropped off. But then these artists started creating works again from the 90s all the way up until now. They created all kinds of paintings. But mostly it's described kind of as paintings of like undisturbed wilderness, like palm trees and you know, like coastal waters, marshes, like ocean waves, tropical sunsets. Similar to the painting I just showed you. A lot of paintings depict Florida's landscape. And one thing that's interesting is apparently a lot of the landscapes in these paintings have actually largely disappeared over the years because of urban development. And so in a way it's kind of documentation of what Florida used to look like, but unfortunately no longer in many cases because, humans. So these paintings are like, I'll say now, like they're tremendously popular. Sort of when you first looked at it, you can kind of see why in a way, cause it is quite beautiful. And it probably is also interesting to a lot of people because it does depict these landscapes that no longer exist. There's more interesting aspects of these artists than just the subject matter. They were really prolific. There's an estimated 200,000 works that were just created between the 1950s and 70s. And since then they've created even more. What I should probably mention that, I haven't yet, is all of these artists are Black. And they, when they were painting these artworks at the time, all of them were rejected from any galleries or any places that's like a traditional art institution. So they had to basically sell their own art themselves in order to, you know, get these works out there. It wasn't until the 90s, when a series of publications in these pretty prominent art magazines were written about them that they became more widely known outside of Florida. And the person who designated the Highwaymen name to them is this writer called Jim Finch. And the reason he called them the Florida Highwaymen is one, it’s probably just like a really catchy title. Kind of like you mentioned earlier, it's like, people are like, oh, what's that? But it's also literally because they drove up and down the Florida highways selling their paintings. Like I95 or Highway 1 or whatever these, like these major highways. And apparently they were just like, they had their cars, were just pulling people over, I'm assuming, and selling their works. So that's kind of a gist of of who they are. But what, what I do want to talk about and get into a little bit is how they became so popular. Like it really was, they had to overcome a lot in order to make a living and get their artworks out there because of the location, as well as the era they were living in at the time.

Quinn: This is such a fascinating little piece of history and especially the breakdown of where their name actually came from. And them actually like selling paintings on the highway is so fascinating. And I'm also like, I'm very interested to hear about how this became a formalized group, because I was, I was surprised to hear you say it is like 25 people because there's a lot more than I was expecting. And I'm very curious to—especially like this isn't just like an art style or whatever. Like this is a connected group of people. And so I'm very interested to hear about like how they connected with each other and how this group became formalized. Like what defines someone as a member of the Florida Highwaymen?

Betty: You actually asked a really great question. And what I'll say kind of off the bat before I get into their origins is that they would themselves consider themselves not formalized. They would just say, we're just a group of people who are friends who happened to know each other and painted together and helped each other sell art. And the designation of exactly who these 26 people are, again, came from an outside source. So similarly to Jim Finch who designated them as the Highwaymen, this writer named Gary Monroe did extensive research into these artists. And he was the one who determined who the 26 people are. And actually over the years, there's been other people, as well as the artists themselves who either dispute to say they shouldn't be on the list or other people should be on the list. But like all things it's vague and it's difficult to determine exactly who's right and who's wrong. Cause really, they're kind of just like a loose group of people who met up by chance and then ended up becoming artists.

Quinn: Wow, okay, interesting. Of course, I mean, all things are always messier than they are in the headlines, but it does make a lot of sense that the actual truth of the matter is a little messier than perhaps some of people on the outside wanted that to be.

Betty: Yeah, for sure. So the gist of the origins of how they started as a group of artists or group of painters, is that in the early 1950s there was this kid, like a 14 year old kid named Alfred Hair. Somehow he got to know this really well-known painter called AE Backus, who was a professionally trained landscape painter. And they were, I think they were friends. And then Backus ended up kind of mentoring, or he saw the talent in Alfred Hair in terms of like, you know, that he thinks he’s—even though he was a 14 year old kid, he had a talent for painting. So he kind of mentored Hair into like landscape painting practices. And apparently Hair was also friends with this other guy, who was the person who painted the painting in the beginning I showed you, called Harry Newton, who also trained under Backus. So the two of them are probably the only people in this group of 26 people who you could say had any like level of professional training, but it's not formal. It's not like they would have art school, cause they probably couldn't afford to, and also wouldn't be accepted at the time anyway, but it just so happens they knew this guy who was a landscape painter, who was a really nice person who would teach him how to paint. This was kind of how like the two of them sort of started this group, although they didn’t originally intend for it to be a group, they kind of just started painting and were like, hey, let's sell our art. It just so happens that Alfred Hair, not only was he somebody who eventually became a really good painter. He also throughout this entire thing was proven to be just like a really good businessmen in terms of like, you know, how to sell and promote art. Basically what happened is he just ended up hiring a bunch of people to help him with things like frame making, painting and selling. And then eventually the group grew larger and larger and all of them were painting and selling art, you know, by like the 60s and 70s.

Quinn: Wow, okay.

Betty: As I mentioned before, so this was during what is known as the Jim Crow Era in the South. And at the time, most African-Americans, they worked in places like citrus groves and tomato fields and factories. And I believe most of these artists themselves worked in places like the groves and the fields and, you know, they were making like very minimum, well, not even minimum, very low wages basically that were, that basically was very difficult to make for them to make an living. And a lot of them decided to take up painting because this was an additional way to make money and possibly a way for them to get out of like, you know, doing very terribly difficult manual labor in horrid conditions while being paid next to nothing. But anyway, so because they they couldn't, they couldn't sell art in traditional institutions or libraries. As I mentioned before, they sold their art on the highway. But what it is is that they, they sold their art for like really low prices. So for instance, like Backus, their teacher, he would sell his paintings for $250, but they would only sell theirs for $25. But in order to make up the difference, they basically just painted prolifically, like nonstop. And they did a bunch of like, I believe it was Hair who kind of pioneered a bunch of techniques. Like he had this technique called “fast painting” where he kind of created an assembly line technique where he would pin up like 20 boards in his backyard. And then he would mix one color at a time. And then he would go to the boards and just paint skies with blue. And then he would just paint the ground with whatever the ground color is. And then he would go through and just paint the trees. And he would also do this really fast, similar to how Impressionists do it. It kinda, it became this like assembly line mechanism. And then as I mentioned before, eventually he got his wife and his family members, his brother-in-law, his friends to become a part of this assembly line, you know, so that they can basically churn out like 20 to 100 paintings a day, depending on how many people showed up to help. 

Quinn: That is so smart. I can just visualize that. I would love to see footage of that process.

Betty: Really interesting. And again, and in addition to that, like he was he was using cheap material. Apparently all the paints were, all the paintings were oil paint. But there were painted on this type of board called upson board, which is a medium density fiberboard used in buildings, but it's really cheap. And of course it's easy to paint on as well. And then apparently they also made their own frames. They would use crown molding again from leftover construction material. And just like these really cheap, like scrapped wood pieces that they would salvage to make these paintings. So it's like the combination of cheap material and just incredibly efficient labor that made it so that they basically produced probably something like 10 times or more as many paintings as a traditional painter, so that they make up for the difference of the fact that they're selling their art for 1/10th the price. I put three examples of artworks that they were doing, like back in the 60s, when they were doing this fast painting process. Like the first one is by Alfred Hair. So, you know, kind of like the defacto leader of the group. The second one is by actually his brother-in-law who's called Carnell Smith. And then the third one is by Marianne Carroll, who’s the only female member of the group. The thing that is interesting to realize is that even though they were doing these kind of fast assembly line processes that seems like they're, you know, it sounds like they're cheating the process, but the thing is these artworks, at least from what I can see, all came out beautifully. Apparently even though he was doing them in a systematic way, all of these paintings came in unique. Like there was no two works that look the same and it was kind of a way for them to explore their creativity as well. I'm not sure like what your opinion is. Some of these are more impressionistic or rougher than others, but I look at these and I'm like, I cannot believe these were done, 20 of these were churned outa daytoday because I couldn't do one of these if I had six months.

Quinn: Yeah. I fully feel like you're punking me right now. So we look at the, the first one is another sunset, or I guess it could be sunrise, but I'm assuming it's sunset because I never see the sunrise. But anyway, over the beach on the ocean. The second one is more impressionistic. And it's like a little house on a beach with palm trees. And then the third one is I think my favorite of these three. It's so cool looking. It’s like a, you have this tree on, it’s a more vertical painting. And then there's this tree coming up the right side of the painting, kind of creeping up around the top right-hand corner. Looking past the tree, you have the sight of a lake and it looks like it might be kind of like a nighttime shot where the moon is shining in the sky. It's so cool looking. And even with the middle one, which I did say is more impressionist than the other two, there's still an incredible amount of detail in all of them. And in these pictures that you sent me, like you can, especially with the link to the first beach painting, you can zoom right up into these brushstrokes and it creates a gorgeous level of detail and texture in this painting that if you told me this took, you know… I don't know how long paintings take to do. I was about to just like, say, oh, this took like a full week. And  then I'm like, is that a long time for a painting? A full month? Maybe. I am not an artist, but anyway, I would believe you, if you told me this took a long time to paint, it feels so much more believable to say this was done in an assembly line of 20 a day. 

Betty: Yeah. And some of these probably took longer than others, but the point is these, as like, as far as I can tell, like in my research, most of these were done in less than a day. Like maybe some of the more complex ones took longer. But cause I read even that one of the group’s members whose name is Al Black, he said, he was selling some of these artworks while the paint was still wet. Like they would paint 20 in a day and give it to Al and put in his car. And because they use these like construction crown moldings, he could stack them while the paint's drying. And yeah, and like he would, he would go and like sell all of them. What's interesting is I do actually also agree. Like my favorite out of these three is probably the one, the one you described, that nighttime one with the tree peeking over the side. That one is by Mary Ann Carroll. And I'm not just biased because she's the only woman. But I do think she probably has some of the best paintings out of like, I mean, they're all amazing, but hers I think are especially gorgeous. Mary Ann Carroll was never formally trained. She apparently always loved drawing and she met Harold Newton and apparently the story is she—Harold Newton also painted on his car and she came across in one day and was like, oh, I like the flames you drew on your car. And Newton's like— or, sorry, was like I like the flames on your car. And Newton was like, oh, I drew it myself. Do you want to learn how to paint? And then he kinda just taught her. And according to the sources I read after, like within weeks, she was painting and then selling art. She had seven children and she was a single mother. So she also was one of these people, I think she immediately was like, I need to, this is a way to make money. And this is a way for me to be able to support my family. So it's probably also why she was like, I am just going to churn out as many of these paintings as possible so I can sell as many as possible.

Quinn: Wow. I’m glad that she found this collective and I mean, but it couldn't have been easy to be the only woman in this sort of in this collective. And so I admire her for being able to hold her own and to establish herself among that.

Betty: We definitely don't have time to get into all 26 artists. But the stories of almost all of these artists and how they became, how they started painting are all really interesting. That second picture of the impressionistic one of the house is, like I mentioned, is by Carnell Smith, who’s Alfred Harris brother-in-law. And he started with, Hair was just like, hey, can you help me just paint the backgrounds? It's really easy. You just do the sky in the water. You just paint swaths of blue. And so he started out kind of as an assistant. And then three years later, he too was just doing his own landscapes and, and like all kinds of other things like these houses. I mentioned earlier, Al Black. So he apparently was just this really good sales guy. So they hired him as a salesman. And then what happened was, like I mentioned, the paint would still be wet and sometimes when he's transporting them, parts would get smudged. So he had to learn how to mix paint to fix some of these paintings while he's on the road. So through learning how to fix them, he learned how to paint and he then was just like, all right, I'm going to do my own paintings.

Quinn: What a fun way at learn how to paint. Talk about trial by fire. I mean, having to figure out how to mix paints to match a color and to fix the smudge on a painting while a customer's standing there, that's amazing. Like no wonder he learned quickly and became a great artist at this group.

Betty: Yeah. And so anyway, like I kind of, I was looking into how they, how and why they became popular. Or how they manage to sell all these paintings. There are some theories to why, but it really just seemed like a lot of people just really, especially people in Florida were just like really drawn to these works. They were representing like the landscape, like what they saw every day. And they're of course just done in these really beautiful and vivid colors. These works ended up in churches, offices, beauty salons, lawyers and doctors offices, and motels and just basically, basically all kinds of places. And again, like there were 200,000 that were produced during this time. And what happened was unfortunately in the, in 1970, this was kind of at the height of their careers and they were selling paintings like mad. Unfortunately there was an incident where Alfred Hair, he was at a local bar and he got into apparently some sort of like conflict or confrontation with someone and he was shot and killed at age 29.

Quinn: Oh, no.

Betty: Yeah. So it's, I mean, obviously it's really sad. He was only 29 and so young and so talented, but not only was it sad that he passed away—because of this, the group kind of just fell apart because he really was the leader of this group. Cause again, not—other people, they were farm workers who didn't really know how to run a business for lack of a better term. And he was really the only person who knew how to keep that together. So yeah, by 1980, most of them just weren't able to sell their works anymore or stopped painting altogether. And like I said, it wasn't until the 90s when there was this renewed interest in their works that they became more widely known throughout the rest of the United States. And some of them started painting again cause they realized, you know, they were able to sell their works again. But this time, instead of selling for $25, it was like $5,000 or $10,000 or more. Today though, so I did read that a lot of their works actually now sell for up to tens of thousands of dollars. And probably, you know, some of the more rare and older ones could go for even higher. In 2004, the group was inducted to the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. And in 2011 Michelle Obama actually invited Mary Ann Carroll to the White House to present one of her paintings. And there's actually an interview with her where she's just like, oh my God, I cannot believe this is happening. Like, how is this my life? Obviously she was just like, I was just painting and selling artworks on the side of the highway. And then in 2011, she was in the White House.

Quinn: Wow.

Betty: That’s kind of an overview of their career and how they developed this business and how they got their artworks out there. And because of these renewed interests in the 90s, and probably even now. I would say ever since the 90s, there's been this interest in what's called folk art or outsider art, which are usually like art that's reflective of like the cultural life of a community, but it's generally rejected by traditional art institutions and mainstream art galleries and places like that. There's just more interest in these, you know, like alternative non-mainstream work by more people, which is really great for these artists who were kind of underappreciated. But I think what is still interesting to think about is despite the fact that, you know, we look at these paintings where like, these are beautiful and amazing, like folk art and artworks like this is still to this day deemed by, you know, like kind of academic institutions as not as valuable as, you know, traditional art of people who are traditionally trained. So there is still, there's still always this like stigma that this is like just folk art this is, this is done by people who are non-professional.

Quinn: The fairly abrupt end to this group in terms of their defacto leader really tragically dying young, and then things not really keeping up after his death is so sad. And I am glad to hear that they have been recognized more in the decades since, and that people have gone back and done at least some amount of correction of the record there and saying like, oh, okay, like these were really interesting artists and they do deserve to be remembered and talked about and commemorated in ways as little as this podcast or as big as the White House. But also, the whole point you ended that with the way that big establishments decide what is it isn't like worthy of recognition is such an ongoing problem. It’s such a self perpetuating problem. Cause you know, we don't talk about anyone on this podcast who isn't like recognized by some art museum in some way, because like we don't know about other people because we don't work in art and so it's just like, but you see the way that even though I think that this, both of us and this podcast has an extremely strong stance of believing in a very wide definition of art and believing that these certain types of art are so under-recognized like, even we lack the ability to recognize a lot of those, because the structures that be don’t. And so it's such a self perpetuating cycle, which is really sad.

Betty: Yeah, for sure. But yeah, what is kind of good about this at least, this group of artists is that because of this recognition their artworks have gotten into some museums. They are represented in a bunch of Florida art and art history museums. And there are 18 of their works in the National Museum of African-American History in Washington, DC. So it is, you know, it is possible for us to see them or, you know, in public collections, which is good because the majority of their artworks are in private collections. Although you know, certain collectors have been donating them or loaning them to museums, you know, kind of around the US. So the other thing that is great for these artists, like having recognition is that they kind of—ever since the 90s, they no longer have to do this fast assembly line type of situation. A lot of them have been able to take more time to develop more detailed and larger works. And so the bottom of the show notes, I just kind of gave like three examples of artworks that were done by—one of them is Carnell Smith. So you'll remember the, like the really sketchy impressionistic house, but now he's able to do like—he’s actually, unfortunately since then has passed away. But at this time he was able to do more detailed paintings. And then another one is an example of a work that was done by Mary Ann Carroll in 2019. And then the third one is an example of a work that was done by Chico Wheeler who—and this work was painted in 2010. As far as I know, based on my research, 9 out of the 26 Highwaymen are still alive. And I think all of them but one, at least as far as 2019, are still painting to this day. Most of them are in their seventies and eighties, but they're still painting and they're still selling their artworks, but now they can do it in more detail and take more time doing them.

Quinn: Wow. I am so glad to hear that the ones who are still alive and hopefully the ones who have passed away, like up until that point are, you know, still in art and still doing that work and now have the chance to actually get some more compensation for it. I do have to say real quick, when you, you said earlier, at least, you know, hundreds of thousands of paintings or whatever are in private collections. It's interesting. Cause I feel like most of the time when you hear like, oh, all of their work is in private collections. It's really tragic because that usually means like 10 rich people. But this means like actually just the entire population of Florida has these paintings in their home, you know, that's kind of more the vibe. And that while of course I'm sure tons of them have been lost or destroyed or just, you know, misplaced over the years, because there are just so many in circulation, it’s also really cool to think about like how many just ordinary people probably have these paintings in their homes.

Betty: That is a really good point. Cause yeah, again, like unlike a lot of other, unlike these traditional artworks that we talked about before, these types of works are more accessible to common, average everyday people. Cause again, that was their market. That was who they were selling to. I'm sure, you know, around Florida, there's still places that that have these artworks, like in their doctor's offices and beauty salons. One thing I will mention is that most of these artworks are signed. But some are actually unsigned, so I don't know if you, after hearing this podcast want to start collecting Highwaymen paintings, you know, just make sure you're actually getting an authentic one.

Quinn: Hey, good point.

Betty: Yeah. And the only other thing I'll mention is that there have been two PBS documentaries that have been made about them if you want to learn more. One of them is called The Highwaymen: Florida’s Outsider Artists from 2003. And the other one is called The Highwaymen: Legends of the Road. So I think they are hour long documentaries and there are interviews with some of the Highwaymen who were still alive at the time, including Mary Ann Carroll. So some additional resources, if people are interested.

Quinn: There are so many great links in the show notes this week, from all the pictures of everything we talked about today and those further resources to check out. So definitely go check out our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. You can also find us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod. And you can also find me on Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can also find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsv, and I am also on YouTube as ARTiculations. And speaking of YouTube, we also have a YouTube channel, Pictorial Podcast where you can watch some of our podcasts a few weeks after the audio versions have been released and you can see the artworks go by on the video. And I definitely encourage you to check out the ones in this podcast.

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!