The Florida Highwaymen

02.05.15 – 02.27.15
SAW Gallery

Co-curated with Guy Bérubé

“The Florida Highwaymen” is term used to identify a group of 26 African-American landscape painters that formed during the 1950s in Fort Pierce, Florida. Their careers took shape during a time and in a place where pursuing a career as an artist presented an alternative to working in citrus groves and labour camps. Denied access to private galleries due to segregation, the Highwaymen made a living selling their work door to door and from their cars along Florida’s eastern coastal roads A1A and US 1.

This major group exhibition addresses the problem of visibility by highlighting their distinctive artistic approach in relation to the social, cultural and political context in which it first emerged. Each of the 30 works in this exhibition has been generously provided by Tony Hayton, an Ottawa-based collector who was introduced to the Highwaymen in 2000. Although this project remains the largest of its kind, as well as the first to be presented in Canada, the works on view make up only a small fraction of the group’s total output, which is estimated to be anywhere from 250,000 to 400,000 paintings over a 60-year period.

Images courtesy of David Barbour