Fifty years ago the idea of a white art gallery owner flying down from Atlanta to meet a group of black artists in Fort Pierce would have seemed preposterous.
First of all, black artists were virtually unknown in the segregated South; second, where would any aspiring black artist have exhibited his work? White-owned galleries might as well have been on another planet.
That fact, of course, prompted a group of painters from Fort Pierce, subsequently dubbed the Highwaymen by a collector, to take a new tack. They crammed the trunks of their cars with stacks of colorful paintings (many still with wet paint) and hit the highway to sell them at medical offices and motels all over South Florida.
Last Thursday, what was once impossible became fact.
Atlanta gallery owner Catherine Kelleghan flew here to meet six of the Highwaymen, looking to represent them to a growing African-American clientele in her city.
Kelleghan said that several of her clients had urged her to exhibit more black or ethnic art. During her research, she came across the story of the Highwaymen.
Spurred on by dynamic individuals like Fort Pierce artist Alfred Hair (killed in a barroom brawl in 1970), and to a lesser extent by Gifford painter Harold Newton, the group grew until more than 20 painters and salesmen were plying the highways.
Back in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, the economic choice was clear to these young men: Either sweat your brains out in the tomato fields or citrus groves for maybe $5 a day or try selling paintings at anywhere between $15 and $25 each — a fortune by comparison.
Last Thursday, I was lucky enough to sit down to lunch at Avenue D's Granny's Kitchen restaurant with Kelleghan, five Highwaymen and the only Highway-woman. The stories began to flow like a bottomless glass of sweet ice tea.
The legend of the Highwaymen has grown over the years, and since it wasn't written down until recently, the stories have always been a little, shall we say, elastic in nature.
Gary Monroe, a college art lecturer from Daytona wrote the definitive book on the Highwaymen in 2002. It was Monroe who first told the story about "assembly-line" art. Alfred Hair, the originator of the Fort Pierce group realized that to make some really big money, they needed volume. Monroe wrote that one artist would paint the clouds, another specialized in water, while others might add in the foreground details in the highly stylized Florida landscapes.
Perhaps early on that did happen, yet no one on Thursday even mentioned it.
What became clear is that there were two distinct groups of painters, and those from Fort Pierce were aware of but didn't socialize with those from Gifford. The idea of a tight-knit group seems to have come later.
Most in the group said they learned how to paint by observing their peers. They played on their strengths: along with being a born entrepreneur, Hair was especially good at painting the ocean; Gibson was the fastest painter, and everyone agreed Al Black was the slickest salesman.
For Mary Anne Carroll, the lone woman in the group, it was the fact she had a car. Once she was allowed to hit the road, she sold $70 worth of paintings the first day and she was hooked.
I knew about Hair's role; I was less familiar with the influence of Newton, who many critics say was the best pure painter in the group. It was Newton who encouraged several others to take up art for a living, recalled Curtiss Arnett, Roy McLendon and Willie Reagan, all from Gifford.
Some like Reagan and Fort Pierce-based Issac Knight held full-time jobs. Reagan taught school, Knight worked at Grumman Aerospace. Both began painting in their spare time.
