Creator Record

Metadata

Name

Evans, Minnie

Other names

Minnie Eva Jones
Minnie Jones

Dates & places of birth and death

Born in Long Creek, North Carolina in 1892.
Died in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1987.

Nationality

African American

Occupation

Artist
Gatekeeper at Airlie Gardens in Wilmington, NC.

Notes

Evans' first paintings were done entirely in wax crayons and resemble an exercise employing every color in a gigantic box of Crayolas. The colors included greens shaded from light to deep, purples from mauve to pink, rose, and royal, and full ranges of reds, blues, and yellows with a sparing use of black and white. Evans' complex designs reveal an unaccountable presence of Caribbean, East Indian, Chinese, and Western elements in color and subject matter. Her own explanation of her work was that "this art that I have put out has come from the nations I suppose might have been destroyed before the flood. . . . No one knows anything about them, but God has given it to me to bring [them] back into the world." The central motif in many of Evans' paintings is a human face surrounded by curvilinear and spiral plant and animal forms and eyes merging with foliate patterns. She equated eyes with the omniscience of God and the concept of the eye as the window of the soul. Author Mary E. Lyons tells how Starr suggested that Minnie go back and sign and date earlier works, “Minnie agreed, though she had trouble estimating dates for pictures she had completed ten years earlier. As a result, many dates are incorrect. Not all of the signatures are Minnie’s either – in the early 60s, Minnie asked her granddaughter to sign her pictures for her.”