Works from the Cowles-Hoard Collection

A self-taught artist born on the Caribbean island of Antigua in 1926, Frank Walter was descended from both enslaved Africans and Scottish plantation owners. Highly educated and ambitious, at the age of 22, he became the first person of color on the island to manage a sugar plantation. After Hurricane Dog ravaged Antigua in 1950, he traveled to England to learn methods to modernize the sugar industry and to research his family history. The racism and indifference he faced while working odd jobs in Europe over the next decade would greatly influence his later creative work. On his return to Antigua in 1961, he focused on his captivating art and writing. Before his death at the age of 82, Walter produced thousands of soulful paintings and drawings, hundreds of hand-carved wood sculptures, tens of thousands of pages of arresting writing, as well as audio recordings and photographs. His work was largely overlooked during his lifetime, but since his passing, he has gained worldwide recognition for his vivid portraits and atmospheric landscapes painted on unusual surfaces such as wood scraps and cardboard from Polaroid film cartridges. This exhibition commemorates the artist's 100th birthday and features approximately 35 intriguing paintings and sculptures, along with a complete set of his alphabet pictures, rendered in oil and pen on Xerox paper. There are also intimate portraits and pastoral scenes painted on paper, cards, spools, record sleeves, cardboard, and scraps of wood, alongside surreal beings and everyday people, beautifully carved from bits of wood.