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  • Giving Art to an Artist
  • Sedrick Huckaby (bio)

Samella Lewis, without question, is one of the most prominent figures in the history of African American art. I considered it a privilege to be able to give a piece to her as an award gift. The challenge was deciding which piece to give an artistic legend. After doing a considerable amount of thinking I decided to give her my painting, Untitled colored portrait #3. I believed this piece was the embodiment of my personal style while speaking to Samella’s art making practice as well.

Colored portrait #3 is a small painting, about 8” x 10” with a bold presence. The surface is a thick imposto with a kaleidoscopic color palette. The colors modulate from cool to warm, blues and greens to reds and violets. The multicolored surface speaks to the variety of beauty and brokenness in the African American people. Since her figures are imbued with expressive colors, a colorful interpretation of the African American figure is something Samella could identify with.

Texture is another quality that is quite evident in Samella’s work. Colored portrait #3 is not just a thickly incrusted painting, it is a relief painting. I have coined the term “relief painting” to describe a surface texture that is thick and has three-dimensional depth in the creation of its forms. In short, paint creates actual low relief forms. I chose this piece hoping that as a textural artist Samella would enjoy looking at its texture. [End Page 598]


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The 2014 Callaloo Art Award Colored portrait #3 (2014) by Sedrick Huckaby

Photograph by A. H. Jerriod Avant © 2014

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Sedrick Huckaby

Photograph by Leticia Huckaby © 2013

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Samella Lewis and Unity Lewis

Photograph by Unity Lewis © 2015

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Hermine Pinson and Courtney Bryan

Photograph by A. H. Jerriod Avant © 2014

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Sedrick Huckaby

SEDRICK HUCKABY, a native of Forth Worth, TX, teaches at the University of Texas at Arlington. He began painting quilts as backdrops for portraits. Over time, quilts became the focus, acting as artful messengers that tell stories of family, ancestral legacy, and spiritual concepts through draping folds and connected patches. His newest quilt paintings are typified by a monumental scale, heavy layers of paint, interplay of light and shadow, and a sense of soft texture that defies the hardness of the thick impasto on canvas. Huckaby’s most recent series The 99%, as opposed to the 1% so often mentioned in the press, features a powerful installation of more than 100 lithographic portraits that the artist created during a recent residency at the Brandywine Print Workshop in Philadelphia. His work has garnered for him a number of honors, such as a Guggenheim Award, Elizabeth Greenshield Award, Davidson Family Fellowship, Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, Brandeis Mortimer-Hayes Traveling Fellowship, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant. His work is held in a number of permanent collections—e.g., Whitney Museum of American Art, Boston Museum of Fine Art, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Art Institute of Chicago, and Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He is represented by Valley House Gallery in Dallas, TX.

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