Clementine Hunter (American/Louisiana, 1886-1988), Wedding Scene

Clementine Hunter (American, 1886-1988)
Clementine Hunter was a self-taught African American folk artist from the Cane River region of Louisiana, who lived and worked on the Melrose Plantation. She was born into a Louisiana Creole family at the Hidden Hill Plantation near Cloutierville in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana and started working as a farm laborer when young. In her fifties, Hunter began to sell her paintings, which soon gained local and national attention for their complexity in depicting black southern life on plantations in the early 20th century. Hunter’s colorful oil paintings do not rely on traditional perspective and instead employ flat planes of color and shifts in scale to carve out spaces and objects in her inventive renderings of day-to-day actives. Her works were often created on plates, discarded fabric, and other readily available materials. Initially she sold her first paintings for as little as 25 cents, but by the end of her life, her work was being exhibited in museums and sold by dealers for thousands of dollars. Though she never learned to read or write, she went on to receive an honorary fine arts degree from the Northwestern State University of Louisiana in 1986 as a recognition for her artistic accomplishments and contributions. Hunter is often compared to another famous self-taught artist, Grandma Moses, and is considered one of the most celebrated southern painters.