Minnie Evans
Artist Biography

"I have no imagination. I never plan a drawing, they just happen. In a dream it was shown to me what I have to do, of paintings. The whole entire horizon all the way across the whole earth was out together like this with pictures. All over my yard, up all the sides of trees and everywhere were pictures."

— Minnie Evans quoted in Nina Howell Starr, "The Lost World of Minnie Evans," The Bennington Review vol. 111, no. 2 (Summer 1969): 41.

The paintings and drawings of Minnie Evans depict scenes from the artist's private dream world. But even to the artist herself, this dream world was not entirely comprehensible. Evans was born in 1890, the only child of Joseph and Ella Kelley, farmers who lived in rural Pender County, North Carolina, near Wilmington. Evans' parents moved to Wilmington during her early childhood, and she attended school there through the sixth grade. She married Julius Evans of Wilmington and had three sons.

Evans traced her background to a maternal ancestor who was brought to the United States from Trinidad as a slave. There are elements in Evans' art that invite comparison to Caribbean folk art forms, though the artist only once traveled outside her native North Carolina. The bright colors and floral motifs that appear in her paintings were most likely inspired by trees and flowers, especially azaleas, at Airlie Gardens in Wilmington, where Evans worked as the gatekeeper for many years.

"My whole life has been dreams . . . sometimes day visions . . . they would take advantage of me," Evans once said. She also recalled that in 1944 a fortune teller informed her that she was "wrapped completely in color," and that she had "something of all nations."

The dream world of Minnie Evans received its earliest visual manifestations on Good Friday 1935 when she completed two small pen-and-ink drawings on paper dominated by concentric circles and semi-circles against a background of unidentifiable linear motifs. Evans always placed a good deal of significance on these early drawings.

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."

Source: https://americanart.si.edu/artist/minnie-evans-1466
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Minnie Evans, Artist
(December 12, 1892 – December 16, 1987)

Minnie Evans was inspired to start drawing due to visions and dreams that she had when she was a young girl. She used different media in her work, but started with using wax and crayon.
She is known as a southern folk artist and as a surrealist and visionary artist as well.

Evans (born Minnie Eva Jones) was born to Ella Jones on December 12, 1892 in Long Creek, Pender County, North Carolina. Ella was only thirteen years old at the time. Evans' biological father, George Moore, left after she was born. After Evans was only two months old, she and her mother moved to Wilmington, North Carolina to live with Evans' grandmother, Mary Croom Jones in 1893.[Minnie Jones attended school until the sixth grade and in 1903, Minnie Jones, Ella, and Mary Croom Jones moved to Wrightsville Sound which was a town close to Wilmington. In Wrightsville, Ella Jones met her future husband, Joe Kelly, and they married in 1908.

During this time, Jones worked as a "sounder" selling shellfish door to door. In 1908, one of Joe Kelly's daughter's from a previous marriage introduced Minnie Jones to Julius Caesar] Minnie Jones, who was sixteen at the time, married Julius (19) that same year. The couple had three sons, Elisha Dyer, David Barnes Evans, and George Sheldon Evans.

Beginning in 1916, Minnie Evans was employed as a domestic at the home of her husband's employer, Pembroke Jones, a wealthy industrialist. The Evans family lived on Jones's hunting estate, "Pembroke Park," known today as the subdivision Landfall. Pembroke Jones died in 1919 and his wife, Sadie Jones remarried Henry Walters.

The couple moved nearby to the Arlie Estate which was left to Sadie Jones from Pembroke Jones.
Evans continued to work from Sadie Jones and now Henry Walters, on the Arlie Estate. After Walters died, Sadie Jones decided to turn the Arlie Estate into gardens which later became one of the most famous gardens of the south. After Sadie Jones died, a man named Albert Corbet bought the property in 1947 and assigned Evans to be the gatekeeper and take admission from public visitors. She held this position for the rest of her life. She retired from her job as the gatekeeper when she was 82 years old in 1974.

Evans began drawing on Good Friday 1935, where she finished two drawings using pen and ink "dominated by concentric and semi-circles against a background of unidentifiable linear motifs". She heard a voice in her head that said ‘Why don't you draw or die?' After this, Evans did not resume drawing until 1940. She started using pencil and wax on paper for her beginning works and she later worked with oil paints and mixed media collages.

Her subject matter were usually either biblical scenes or scenes from nature. Her influences included African, Caribbean, East India, Chinese, and Western cultures. Since she held the position as gatekeeper at the Arlie Gardens, she often used the gardens as her inspiration in her work to depict nature scenes.

Evans first started selling her work at the Arlie Gardens by hanging her pieces on the front gate of the gardens. Those who would come and visit the Arlie Gardens began purchasing her work. Soon she became known throughout the south and visitors would come to the gardens just to see her work. In 1961, she had her first formal exhibition of drawings and oils at the Artists Gallery in Wilmington, NC.

In 1962, she met Nina Howell Starr, who would publicize her work for the next 25 years. Starr, also an artist herself (photographer), knew of Evans' work in 1961 and wanted to meet the artist in person. Evans sold her first painting for 50 cents apiece.

Folk art specialist and photographer, Howell, encouraged Evans to sell her paintings for better prices, and assisted Evans throughout her career. Evans felt her work was too personal to share with the public which held her from releasing anything until 1961 when she had her first major art exhibition at The Little Gallery in Wilmington, now known as St. John’s Museum.

From 1962-1973, Starr recorded interviews with Evans about her work. At first, Evans was weary to trust Starr with her work, but they gained a mutual respect for each other. Starr helped to launch Evans' career by storing and selling her art in New York City. She also guided her in the art world by making her sign and date her pieces.

In 1966, Starr arranged for Evans' first New York exhibit at The Church of Epiphany and Clements Episcopal Church. In August 1969, another exhibition of Evans' work took place at the Art Image Gallery of New York and in 1975, curated a major Evans exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. With failing health, another exhibition of her work was curated in 1980 at the St. John's Museum. She also had many other exhibitions in New York as well.

Many art critics have labelled Evans work as “surrealistic”, “visionary”, and “psychedelic”. Religion played a vital role in many of Evans paintings. Evans later confessed she wasn’t sure of the meanings behind her paintings, stating, “When I get through with them I have to look at them like everybody else. They are just as strange to me as they are to anybody else.”

Evans created "one of the most powerful works of art " which was a self-portrait on the cover of a scrapbook in 1981.

Evans died December 16, 1987 at age 95, leaving more than 400 artworks to the St. Johns Museum of Art (now the Cameron Art Museum) in Wilmington. After Evans's death, artist Virginia Wright-Frierson designed and built the Minnie Evans Bottle Chapel at Airlie Gardens in her memory. "Minnie Evans" day was proclaimed on May 14, 1994 in Greenville, NC

Evans was the subject of the documentary The Angel that Stands By Me: Minnie Evans' Art in 1983.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnie_Evans