Discover Florida Highwaymen's art

Alfred Hair painted this after studying with A.E. Backus. Hair was 14 or 15 when he studied painting with Backus, a successful white landscape artist in Fort Pierce, Fla. It was the 1950s, and Backus promised Zanobia Jefferson, an art teacher at then-segregated Lincoln Park High, 'Send me your students. I'll help all I can.' Hair learned at Backus's elbow and taught his friends. It was Hair who developed the technique he called 'fast painting,' laying on bold, quick strokes in a high-volume, low-cost approach to art that worked brilliantly. Hair, and other fellow African-American landscape painters, are known as the Florida Highwaymen.
Alfred Hair painted this after studying with A.E. Backus. Hair was 14 or 15 when he studied painting with Backus, a successful white landscape artist in Fort Pierce, Fla. It was the 1950s, and Backus promised Zanobia Jefferson, an art teacher at then-segregated Lincoln Park High, "Send me your students. I'll help all I can." Hair learned at Backus's elbow and taught his friends. It was Hair who developed the technique he called "fast painting," laying on bold, quick strokes in a high-volume, low-cost approach to art that worked brilliantly. Hair, and other fellow African-American landscape painters, are known as the Florida Highwaymen.
(Courtesy of Florida University Press, from Gary Monroe's book The Highwaymen, Florida's African-American Lanscape Painters)