Lois Mailou Jones (November 3, 1905 – June 9, 1998) was a prize winning artist who lived into her nineties and who painted and influenced others during the Harlem Renaissance and beyond during her long teaching career. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts and is buried on her beloved Martha’s Vineyard in the Oak Bluffs Cemetery.

Dr. Jones began painting as a child and had shows of her work when she was in high school. “Every summer of my childhood, my mother took me and my brother to Martha’s Vineyard island. I began painting in watercolor which even today is my pet medium.”

After graduation from the School of the Museum of Art in Boston, she designed textiles until a decorator told her–”You couldn’t have done this, you’re a colored girl.” She began looking for a way for her name to become known and was turned down for a job at her alma mater. She was hired by Charlotte Hawkins Brown after some initial reservations and founded the art department at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina. As a prep school teacher, she coached a basketball team, taught folk dancing, and played the piano for church services. Only one year later, she was recruited to join the art department at Howard University in Washington D.C and remained as professor of design and watercolor painting until her retirement in 1977. While developing her own work as an artist, she is also known as an outstanding mentor.

In 1937, for her first sabbatical from Howard University on a general educational fellowship, she went to Paris for the first time where she worked very hard producing 35 to 40 pieces during one year’s time, including “Les Fetiches” a stunning, African inspired oil which is owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum [1] and one of her best known works and her first piece which combined traditional African forms with Western techniques and materials to create a vibrant and compelling work.

“The French were so inspiring. The people would stand and watch me and say ‘mademoiselle, you are so very talented. You are so wonderful.’ In other words, the color of my skin didn’t matter in Paris and that was one of the main reasons why I think I was encouraged and began to really think I was talented.”

After marrying Haitian artist Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noel in 1953, Jones traveled and lived in Haiti. In many of her pieces one can see the influence of the Haitian culture, with its African influences, which reinvigorated the way she looked at the world. Her work became more abstract and hard-edged, after her marriage to Pierre-Noel. Her impressionist techniques gave way to a spirited, richly patterned, and brilliantly colored style. Further travels to eleven African countries enabled Jones to synthesize a body of designs and motifs that she combined in large, complex compositions.

In 1980, she was honored by President Jimmy Carter at the White House for outstanding achievements in the arts. Her paintings grace the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Portrait Gallery, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the National Palace in Haiti, and the National Museum of Afro-American Artists and many others.

Lois felt that her greatest contribution to the art world was “proof of the talent of black artists.” The African-American artist is important in the history of art and I have demonstrated it by working and painting here and all over the world.” But her fondest wish was to be known as an “artist” — without labels like black artist, or woman artist. She has produced work that echoes her pride in her African roots and American ancestry.