"The Farm", Memories of the artists early years in Ozan, Arkansas. Signed and dated 1984.
Eugene White (born 1933) is a San Francisco painter and print maker who has made the chronicle of African-American life the centerpiece of his art practice.
White is a self taught artist who makes realist-style portraits and scene paintings. He has run
his own gallery in San Francisco since the 1970's, supporting exclusively black artists. For decades it was the only black-owned gallery in town.
Starting in the 1960's White began depicting black folks in drawings, prints and paintings. These included members of the Black Panther Party, important black cultural figures, and black people from his childhood in rural Arkansas.
His father worked as a sharecropper and White worked on the farm as a youth too, but by the late 1950s he had left home to find something else. That turned out to be art. He got his start as a sign maker in Saginaw, Michigan and later worked in Detroit making illustrations of Cadillacs for General Motors.
Not willing to accept the second class citizenship he experienced as a black person there, White moved out to San Francisco, where he found himself in a better position to address civil rights issues and aesthetic issues specific to black culture.
White?s first San Francisco exhibition took place with the support of the of the Bull Foundation at the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. He went on to show in many venues including the1971 Black Expo in Chicago and FESRTAC, the 1977 Nigerian Arts and Cultural Festival.
He has executed many commissions, including one at Bennet College. His prints and paintings have been acquired by museums and private collectors, including the Oakland Museum of California. In the City San Francisco, July 11th is Eugene White Day.
Overall size: 53 x 43 in.
Sight size: 48 x 35 in.