Attributed to Lois M. Jones, no coa, private collection, medium: watercolor measurements: 27"hx33"w framed, mint condition Biography: Lois Mailou Jones was an artist and educator. Her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Muscarelle Museum of Art, and The Phillips Collection. Jones’ teaching career began shortly after finishing college. The director of the Boston Museum School refused to hire her, telling her to find a job in the South where "her people" lived: 186 In 1928 she was hired by Charlotte Hawkins Brown after some initial reservations, and subsequently founded the art department at Palmer Memorial Institute, a historically black prep school, in Sedalia, North Carolina. As a prep school teacher, she coached a basketball team, taught folk dancing, and played the piano for church services. In 1930, she was recruited by James Vernon Herring to join the art department at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Jones remained as professor of design and watercolor painting until her retirement in 1977. She worked to prepare her students for a competitive career in the arts by inviting working designers and artists into her classroom for workshops. While developing her own work as an artist, she became an outstanding mentor and strong advocate for African-American art and artists.In the early 1930s, Jones began to seek recognition for her designs and art work. She began to exhibit her works with the William E. Harmon Foundation with a charcoal drawing of a student at the Palmer Memorial Institute, Negro Youth (1929). In this period, she shifted away from designs and began experimenting with portraiture.Jones developed as an artist through visits and summers spent in Harlem during the onset of the Harlem Renaissance or New Negro Movement. Aaron Douglas, a Harlem Renaissance artist, influenced her seminal art piece The Ascent of Ethiopia. African design elements can be seen in both Douglas and Jones' paintings. Jones studied actual objects and design elements from Africa.: In her works Negro Youth and Ascent of Ethiopia the influence of African masks are seen in the profiles of the faces. The chiseled structures and shading renderings mimic three-dimensional masks that Jones studied. Jones would utilize this style throughout her career.During this period she occasionally collaborated with poet Gertrude P. McBrown; for example, McBrown's poem, "Fire-Flies," appears with an illustration by Jones in the April 1929 issue of the Saturday Evening Quill.