A brush with fame

[Times photos: Jamie Francis] James Gibson works on a seascape, a creation from a photograph and his memory from a February trip to Clearwater Beach. “I know it don’t look like much now, but give me five or six hours and you’ll like it, you’ll see.”

By JEFF KLINKENBERG, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 23, 2002

One of the group of African-American landscape painters known as the Highwaymen adjusts to the attention finally coming to him and his peers.

FORT PIERCE -- These days artist James Gibson can't afford a James Gibson painting. He had one he really liked, a piney woods landscape, hanging on his own wall.

"My favorite painting of mine maybe of all time," he says.

This customer came along. She loved the painting and brought along a fat checkbook. "I started seeing those dollar signs," Gibson says. He sold the painting for $7,000.

Not long ago, his top price was $35. But times have changed so fast he hardly knows what to say once he's gotten past "unbelievable." For him and the other African-American Fort Pierce artists known as "the Highwaymen," good times have arrived beyond their wildest dreams.

Gibson looks far younger than his 64 years and has not slowed in his work. “Man, I’m always thinking about that next painting. You have to. Always had to.”

For almost a half-century the mostly self-taught artists painted in near obscurity. Their bottom line was not creating masterpieces but making money by producing fast and affordable paintings for people who ordinarily didn't buy art: owners of mom-and-pop motels and working folks they encountered on the street. It was honest toil that kept them out of the orange groves and packing houses, often the only work available for black men in segregated East Central Florida.

Sometimes dismissed as "motel art," their paintings of palm trees and moonlit rivers sold in pre-Disney Florida like fried mullet and hushpuppies. The Highwaymen -- 25 men and one Highwaywoman -- cranked out dozens of paintings a day and hit the road, selling art right out of their car trunks.

Their paintings idealized Florida as a dreamy, postcard place. Rarely did they paint a building into a scene or even a person. That would have dated the work. They stuck with tried and true: haunting cliches of natural Florida that appealed to the masses who loved their state. Over the years a few of the painters became very good. Nobody painted more than James Gibson. Now 64, he was known as the most prolific painter Fort Pierce had ever seen. "My record was 100 paintings in a day," he says, smiling sheepishly. "It tired me out. But back then, to make money, you had to paint and paint."

Now exhibiting, Inmate No. 793362 Al Black gained a reputation as an artist, then lost it as a cocaine addict. Now, drab prison walls are his canvas, and the Lord is his inspiration.

Now he can afford to slow down. All the surviving Highwaymen artists can. Florida newspapers, especially the St. Petersburg Times, have featured them for years, but in the last six months they have been discovered by the world at large.

A beautiful coffee-table book, The Highwaymen: Florida's African-American Landscape Painters, was published by University Press of Florida. National Public Radio did a comprehensive story. So did theNew York Times.

Somebody from Steven Spielberg's film company, DreamWorks, called after reading the story in the New York Times. He wanted to secure rights to a couple of paintings for an upcoming film, Catch Me If You Can, which stars Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio.

And James Gibson's painting. At least he hopes so.

"It's supposed to be in the background, on a bank wall," he says.

It's a couple of palm trees, bathed in red moonlight.

Over the years he did thousands of palm trees. And thousands of river and swamp scenes. About 10,000, in fact.

James Gibson hated to let his brush dry.

All about money

"Come in. Come in. Come right in!" Gibson shouts, opening the door on a balmy morning. He just scrambled into his clothing after a nap.

"I was up at 4 a.m. painting," he says. "I like to paint when it's quiet. You know? When the whole world is sleeping except your own thoughts."

He had been painting Florida landscapes, his specialty, swaying palm trees and golden woods and moonswept rivers and red-bloomed poinciana trees.

"I go for a drive and look for inspiration," he says. "I look at clouds. I like the way they're reflected in the water. I look at trees. I like to find me a pine that's been struck by lightning. Man, I'm always thinking about that next painting. You have to. Always had to."

The Highwaymen tradition was born in 1954. That's when a prominent white landscape painter named A.E. "Bean" Backus encouraged a young black painter, Harold Newton, to give up painting religious scenes on velvet and try Florida landscapes. He did, and they sold.

About a year later, Backus gave lessons to 14-year-old Alfred Hair, who had an amazing flair for the work. Hair told his friend James Gibson: "If I can do this, you can do this, too." Eventually, other talented young people joined Hair's circle and started selling paintings up and down U.S. 1 from Miami to Jacksonville, and inland from Cocoa to St. Petersburg.

"I'd always wanted to paint," Gibson says. As a third-grader, he'd ignore his teacher and draw pictures of cowboys and Indians and sell them for ice-cream money. In high school, he continued dreaming about art. He was a good student and got accepted into Tennessee State College to study biology.

But on vacations, he painted in Fort Pierce with Hair and the famous Backus, known for his liberal viewpoints, his charitable nature and fondness for rum. Sometimes he'd give his proteges paintings to take home to study. With a painting as a model, they'd work on their technique.

"Mr. Backus would say, 'Slow down. Slow down.' But that's not what it was all about for us. It was about painting fast so we could sell our paintings."

Rich people bought Backus' classic landscapes for $350. "We knew we couldn't ever get that much," Gibson says. Their strategy was to sell 10 paintings for $35 each to make the $350.

They painted on a cheap roofing material called Upsom board. They made their frames out of door trim. They hated to waste paint. Paint cost money, and money was what it was all about.

"Their greatest achievement," wrote Gary Monroe, author of The Highwaymen, "was in creating a seamless blend of art and commerce. As they rushed to get paintings out and meet demand, they unconsciously expressed their own values through their bold, sure, and energetic style. Having grown up in Fort Pierce, where they played as children, fished as adolescents, and came of age, they painted scenes with insiders' eyes."

Hair told people he wanted to make enough money to buy a Cadillac and to be a millionaire. He got his Caddy but died before making a million.

"We were very competitive," Gibson says. "If Alfred was painting, why, I had to be painting, too. One time I was over at Alfred's and he yawned and said, 'Oh, man! I'm tired. I'm going to bed.' I said good night. On the way home I started thinking about Alfred. He never went to bed early, man! So I went back to his house. I could see the fluorescent light shining through the blinds. He was painting again so he'd have more than me to sell the next day."

Gibson tried to get an edge on his friends. In Miami, he'd visit the showroom of the biggest rug company and talk to sales people about trends. Brown rugs meant amber-toned paintings to match. With Valentine's Day approaching, Gibson might throw some red into a painting to appeal to a someone trying to woo a new girlfriend.

He dropped out of college to paint. His mother was worried, but "We prayed about it, and I promised her I'd listen to spirituals every morning."

He still does when the paint flies. And he makes the paint fly, sometimes while working on three or four landscapes at once. Then he showers and dresses and puts his art -- sometimes the paint is still wet -- into the trunk of the Lincoln. Time to sell. But not like in the old days when he made a dozen sales stops. Now he visits galleries that want his work.

He is a medium-sized man who looks a lot younger than his six decades. His hair has yet to turn gray except for a few flecks, and his skin is still smooth. He wears a goatee and is known as a flashy dresser. When he sells a painting, he likes to make a good impression. It's an old habit.

In the old days, in segregated Florida, making a good impression was important. There were still water fountains labeled "colored," and black men had to be careful when crossing over to the white side of town. Highwaymen kept a low profile. They didn't want to do anything to hurt business.

Gibson would knock on a door -- he liked to visit doctor's offices -- and introduce himself as James Gibson, the artist. He'd carry in a couple of paintings to show them off.

Most of the time he'd make a sale. Occasionally a customer would ask him to paint a larger painting that would go with the decor. He'd come back the next day with the desired painting. And two smaller ones, which he'd lay next to the large painting. Usually the customer would say, "How much for all three?"

Driving home from West Palm Beach one night, he looked in the rearview mirror of his Cadillac and saw an ominous flashing light. The police. His stomach turned.

"State trooper put his light on me and asked, 'Whose car is this?' I said, 'It's mine, sir' polite as can be. See, I knew how to talk to the police. I said, 'I'm James Gibson and I'm an artist.' "

Gibson got out of his car and opened the trunk. He remembers selling three paintings to the trooper.

James Gibson helps James “Bo” Powell, a former police chief and city manager of Fort Pierce and a longtime customer, load paintings into Powell’s car. Powell purchased the two paintings on the right from Gibson in about 1962; the one on the left is a Harold Newton. Powell brought them to Gibson recently to be retouched. The men figure the paintings sold for between $15 and $30, “depending on how many I bought,” Powell says. “Or how much I needed the money,” Gibson says.

Lost, and found

On Aug. 9, 1970, Alfred Hair visited Eddie's Place, a Fort Pierce nightclub. Gunshots erupted -- some say it was a fight over a woman -- and Hair was killed.

After Hair's death, Highwaymen sales faltered. Florida was changing fast. Disney and other huge theme parks were putting the small tourist attractions out of business; interstates funneled traffic away from the smaller towns. Highwaymen painters drove farther and farther to make sales. A recession hit. Gas prices went up. Small towns passed laws outlawing street sales. A few of the artists got arrested for violating the ordinances.

Some Highwaymen stopped painting. One opened a restaurant. Some cut grass. Several became preachers. A few turned to drugs and alcohol.

Gibson's marriage failed, he struggled, but he kept his paint brushes and his palette knife busy.

In the 1990s, Jim Fitch, an amateur historian, anthropologist and art fancier, began collecting landscapes from Florida's east coast. He thought some were crude, but he was impressed by most of them and started a collection for the Museum of Florida Art and Culture in Central Florida.

He began traveling to Fort Pierce. But the artists didn't know what to make of the fast-talking, sharply dressed white man who kept asking questions in a Southern accent. As far as they knew, he might be from Internal Revenue and looking for back taxes. Fitch persisted and got to know the artists and their work.

Haunting thrift stores and garage sales, Fitch built a huge collection. The most he ever paid for a painting was $350 for a Harold Newton. Usually he spent less than $10 and bought a few paintings for $1.

"Some of them were really good," Fitch says. He was impressed, especially, by Harold Newton's seascapes. "There is, in the classic tradition of painting, a method called alla prima. It means that the artist painted somewhat intuitively and usually without the benefit of a drawing or underpainting. To be good, it requires a confidence and a coordination of the hand and eye that can only be obtained by experience. A lot of it."

Now some of those paintings -- and thousands like them -- are fetching big money.

"In 2000 the value of their work sold on the Internet tripled," Fitch says. "It tripled again in 2001. It's tripled again this year."

Not long ago a Harold Newton painting sold over eBay for $12,000. Newton died in 1994 in obscurity. Alfred Hair paintings these days go for $1,500 to $4,000.

"It's a little crazy," South Florida art broker John Phillips says. "The market for Highwaymen paintings is charging ahead with no slowdown in sight. It's hard to find any painting for less than $300."

And James Gibson?

"His work is better now than it ever was. Usually, it's the old paintings that are the most available. James is the exception. His work has really grown over the years. He has never stopped working at it."

Years ago Gibson was known for his monochromatic studies. Now he uses every color in his box. His work starts at $650 and goes from there. In Gov. Jeb Bush's office hangs a Gibson portrayal of a poinciana tree that cost $3,000. Last year he exhibited in the Florida Supreme Court. Bush wants him to do another exhibit in Tallahassee next year.

Still going strong

Old habits die hard. James Gibson still paints like crazy, four hours in the morning and four hours after supper. In between he naps, catches up with friends and sells his work -- and himself -- to the public. Not long ago he started a Web site and recently started selling Highwaymen T-shirts. "For people who can't afford the paintings," he says, smiling at the irony.

He paints outside, in the back yard, often near Taylor Creek. "Water soothes a man's mind," he tells people. He stacks canvases or masonry boards on a grid of two-by-fours that faces the water. He attacks his paintings with brush and palette knife, steps back, and moves on to the next painting, lets paint dry and returns to the original, all the while humming along with his beloved gospel music.

Sometimes, in the afternoon, he does his field work. He'll get out of his car and do a quick sketch of an interesting location along the Indian River. He might snap a picture to catch the light just right. And whenever he sees a poinciana tree he takes special delight.

"No such thing as an ugly poinciana," he says.

From time to time he goes on a longer trip north on U.S. 1 like in the old days. He's not selling his paintings, necessarily, but looking for old ones. He wants to find an old Harold Newton or an Alfred Hair at a reasonable price. It's not impossible -- sometimes one shows up for a song at a garage sale -- but it gets harder and harder as Highwaymen fame continues to spread.

Last week he traveled to St. Augustine, a favorite Highwaymen selling place, and stopped at every antique shop in sight. Nobody had any Harold Newtons or Alfred Hairs. But most places had James Gibson paintings -- the old ones he used to sell for $15, $25 and $35.

Now they're going for $1,000 or more.

"Can I help you?" a salesperson asked. No, Gibson said. But maybe I can help you. He handed the clerk his business card.

"The guy said, 'You're the James Gibson?' I said, 'That's me, that's me.' And the guy, he started calling his customers over to meet me. Oh, it was really something. Oh, it's not like it used to be.

"You know what? Let me tell you what. Now they treat me like a movie star. Like I said, it's unbelievable."

James Gibson’s work adorns his living room wall, but not for long. The one on the right, one he says was possibly his favorite, recently sold for $7,000. Not long ago his top price was $35.

To learn more

Other sources of information about the Highwaymen art tradition:

The Highwaymen: Florida's African-American Landscape Painters, by Gary Monroe, University Press of Florida, $29.95.

The Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala plans to exhibit Highwaymen art from Saturday through the end of summer. For information, call (352) 236-7100 or visit www.appletonmuseum.org on the Web. The South Florida Community College Museum of Florida Art and Culture in Avon Park houses a large collection. Call (863) 382-6900 for museum hours and directions. The Web site is www.mofac.org. Tyson Trading Co. in Micanopy has a large collection of Highwaymen paintings on display and for sale. Call (352) 466-3410.

South Florida art collector John Phillips has a large Highwaymen Web site. The address is www.r-one.com/flart/irs-page.

James Gibson also has an extensive Web site. The address is www.highwaymen.bigstep.com/

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